THE Com POST

Your weekly update on all things compost related!

Firstly, Happy New Year! I’m proud to report that we were open on the first day of the new year! Good thing too, because we made the decision to close on Christmas, we had a lot of people dropping off two weeks of compost today. Lynne from Compost NOW came by to check out our garden and take a look at our compost operation. I’m pleased to report that she said it looks beautiful, and we’re looking forward to using the compost in our spring gardening!

Last week we collected two bins from the Green Project and none from Galvez Garden (as we took Christmas off). This week we collected two bins from the Green project and this will mark the last week we compost their scraps for the time being. This decision was made to make sure we don’t reach capacity and can continue to serve the community as a direct to farm collection site at the garden on Sundays. It actually came at a perfect time, because Lynne is back in NOLA and will be able to collect their compost at her home compost site for the next six weeks.

We collected one full bin from the Galvez Garden. Here’s a peak at our adding of greens and browns for the week:

Bonus, the browns were collected from a storm drain my husband cleared out while doing daily chores around the garden. That’s some pretty permaculture at work! Clearing debris to help with local infrastructure while using it to compost food waste diverted from landfills! He makes me so proud…

Here he is doing the heavy lifting and turning our pile that we’re currently curing. With my fractured rib, he deserves full credit for keeping up with the compost over the last two weeks. The fresh compost is looking great though, and I’m thrilled to say soon we’ll have another batch for planting!

On to other garden related news, we lost a bench and the ant hill has gotten out of control. One of benches (that recently has been acquiring unwanted tags) had rotted, so it needed to be removed. I suppose that solves the tagging issues, but it does look a bit empty in the space. The whole garden looks a little sad after the freaky cold winter storm had us below freezing for days. It seems less full and I miss the overgrown vines of climbers. What we do have plenty of (and I really need to address) is, ANTS! They’ve made a mound around one of our mature trees, which makes me uncomfortable.

They’re the mean ones, too… fire ants. The only thing I like less than them is the idea of using chemicals to remove them. I’ll have to do some research and some experimenting and only use that as a method of last resort. There is always more to get done when you steward a community garden, so stay tuned!

On a positive note, my rib is healing and I can finally bend over again. I’m nowhere near back to being able to do some hardcore gardening, but moving closer to normal every day. I should be healed within a month, so I’m doing my best to not push myself and re-injure myself, though it’s difficult to stay still this long. I share this to say I am so excited about the new Native Plant Initiative and plans we have for the garden in 2023! As to not mess up any of my gardening goals, I’m taking the lead from winter’s cues and going to stay dormant for a few more weeks.

To everyone who contributed to the garden and our goal of diverting waste from landfills, we thank you! Happy New Year!