Compost!

Did you know that the school had it's very own compost barrel?

I feel like a lot of people don't notice that we do indeed have a compost barrel! It's right outside the school courtyard sitting across the raised beds.

Composting is a great way to use food scraps/organic scraps. About 87% of our landfills are organic matter, so when we think of this; it's a great way to start using fruit scraps or egg shells from the kitchen.

Although fruit scraps are needed, you also need carbon-rich items: dry leaves, grasses, wood, sawdust, branches, etc. The role of brown materials is to help air flow through the pile and provide carbon which is energy for the microorganisms that break down the food scraps. It's like a slow-burn ingredients in comparison to greens.

On the right is a picture of a sawdust barrel from Mr. Feakins. Sawdust, as mentioned, is a brown, which is much needed since the compost barrel needed browns. Previously, I ground up eggshells to put in the barrel and added fruit peels which outbalanced the ratio of browns to greens. The ratio of browns to green is 3 or 4 to 1. Greens are the fruit/veggie scraps, coffee/tea grounds, eggshells, and trimmings. The greens are nitrogen which helps plants create proteins to foster leaf growth.

A poster will be going to go to the school so I can start collecting greens for the compost. Once the weather gets warmer, I'm going to turn the beds and add compost to the raised beds. This is so the plants can get a boost in nutrients!

Below are pictures of the barrel with added sawdust after the rain. It's a bit too wet due to the rain but it evaporated after a while.