Composting

Read an article this morning in the NY Times (Aug 10 edition) about composting in NY city: “Been Scrapped. These New Yorkers Picked Up the Slack.” The article talks about how much stays out of the landfill and can be used to produce compost for gardens and lawns from composting food wastes. The city used to have its own program, but with the Coronavirus and budget cuts, they are no longer able to afford the program. So, some enterprising, environmentally conscious, New Yorkers have stepped in to start their own local programs. Among other things, which really got my attention because of my interest in bicycling was a BK ROT program that used bicycles to pick up the organic household wastes.

I reflected on this in terms of my own composting “program.” I’ve been big on composting for years now. Back on the farm I had a pretty good size operation using horse manure, used bedding from the chickens, garden and kitchens wastes, etc. Great stuff for the garden. On top of that, I had a compost tea system and sprayed the tea in the garden, around the house, and sprayed it on the pastures to help the grass grow (forage) for the horses and goats.

When I moved here to my urban abode and its small garden, I set up another system for here. In addition to kitchen scraps and garden wastes, I still have access to horse manure from our horses we use …. to do equine assisted psychotherapy. So, it is a small scaled down urban system, consisting of three composting bins, with compost in various stages of decomposition (rot). Once decomposed enough, it goes into my garden, and that bin now becomes the housing for fresh composting materials.

Haven’t gotten the compost tea system up and running yet, but getting there. Hopefully this winter.

awaiting to be set up.