THE Com POST

Your weekly update on things compost & garden related!

Happy St. Roch Sunday!

We’ve actually been up to a lot this week! Let’s get y’all caught up.

This week we collected one bin from the Green Project and two full bins from Galvez Garden! It’s some kind of amazing how quickly our new pile is filling up; I blame the plethora of pumpkins we’ve been gifted. Check out our before and after pictures from this week’s collection at the garden to see what I mean.

This week we used up the last of our wood shavings. I was pleasantly surprised that they managed to stay mostly dry the whole time at the garden. They were incredibly helpful for our weekly maintenance and two drop off days. Luckily this week we met a Master Gardener Trainee that has a hook up on more browns to add to the pile.

As a Master Gardener, I was asked to help out a fellow cohort member at the New Orleans Jazz Museum. Formally the Old Mint, Located on the 400 Block of Esplanade and Decatur, Brad Richard is the LSUAG Master Gardener Project Lead. He’s a sweet heart. When he asked for help planting the new butterfly garden, I was happy to oblige!

I love this spot, and the garden looks great! I met Alice while volunteering and she’s going to contribute more browns to aid in our composting efforts! Her partner works at a mill, she’s a nieghbor, and she delivers wood chips. What a blessing!

It was so lovely working in another garden, I might need to make a habit out it! We are so grateful for the new line to recycled products to use at Galvez Garden!

Like I said, we have lots of stories. It was pouring down rain when it was time to set up for the compost. I had to put on my slickers for setting up. I was very proud of myself to show up. We pride ourselves in consistency.

We also met the newest chairperson of greenspace for the Faubourg St. Roch Neighborhood Improvement Association. He reached out to learn more about our rain garden. I scheduled the tour and question-and-answer session for him and his partner during compost collection hours. I was delighted to learn that our garden is featured on their website. Who knew? We are looking forward to assisting in any new green space project creation that they might seek advising on, and delighted to learn that we’re a featured highlight of our community according to the association.

We also drove to Gretna to help out another Master Gardener with a compost tumbler they gave up on… there’s a lot of icky detailed to that story. Let’s just say fruit flies, flying cockroaches, mom car defiling, etc… I’ll just say, we’ve acquired additional compost, and a new-to-us composter. We intend to donate it to the NOLA Artist Incubator for their upcoming project. They’re building something that can travel to share the love of gardening and art to the community. We figure it should have portable composting capability, because we think compost is rad.

All in all, ‘twas a beautiful week to be a community gardener! thanks to all who contributed in our efforts to build something beautiful, and divert food waste from landfills in the process!

Happy composting!