Composting in your community

Each year we celebrate the understated natural wonder that is compost during International Compost Awareness week (3-9 May) - so we thought this was the perfect opportunity to share a community composting special!

I think we can all agree, composting is pretty special. A somehow magical process bringing dead stuff back to life in the form of a rich, living soil, supporting new growth.

The theme for this year's celebrations is ‘feed the soil that feeds us’ and in West Northamptonshire this has been particularly pertinent with the launch of the county’s first Good Food Plan.

I had the opportunity to present at the launch and talk about what harvest means to Garden Organic, and the importance of building local resilience in our food systems. This year our Grow Cook Eat project will build upon the harvest theme to help more people grow their own food and share the produce.

At Ryton, head gardener Emma has been trialling a different approach to our onsite composting. Some of the wooden bays had come to the end of their natural lives, so we’ve replaced them with wire mesh bins in a large cylindrical design. We’ve split ours into sections for ease of turning, so you can lift a section off at a time.

The benefits of the mesh bays are plenty of air circulation, easy to turn, and you can see the contents helping to get the mix right. Emma says: “So far we’ve found they’re not heating up as quickly as our wooden bays, but we’re sticking with them for a full 12 months so we can see how they perform in all seasons.”

Elsewhere in the Midlands, Master Composters in Shropshire have had a busy few months delivering talks and attending community plant and seed swaps. Volunteers have been supporting OsNosh, a community garden in Oswestry, and helped reclaim a composting bin – that had turned slightly smelly! 

The bin has been used daily to process the food waste from the cafe and food past the point of redistribution; however, it had turned into a lasagne of slime between thick layers of cardboard. We emptied it, added lots more browns and mixed it all back in. The smell was beyond pungent, but it’s all sorted now! Remember, compost should have a nice earthy smell, and it’s important to keep lots of air pockets. You can learn more about the composting process here.

Working with partners in the northeast, we’ve supported the development of 10 compost demonstration sites including:

• Crook Hall Gardens in Durham

• The Comfrey Project in Gateshead

• Scotswood Community Garden in Newcastle

• Cresswell Walled Garden

• Coronation Park Gardens in Cramlington

• Newbiggen by the Sea Community Garden

• Space to Grow in Sunderland

• Shildon Alive Community Garden in County Durham

Volunteers connected to sites have recently been invited to take part in a citizen science project in collaboration with Newcastle University. They’ll be using the ‘Tea Bag Test’ to explore decomposition rates and determine soil health.