ROC City Compost Pilot

My wife and I have been composting counter waste and yard clippings at home for a number of years. Our composting journey began back in 2006 with a home-made composting pit built with our kids, and evolved into a purchased covered composting bin in 2013. Eventually we purchased a service to pick up our compostable waste weekly. At the start of this summer, the opportunity to be part of the free City of Rochester's community composting pilot program presented itself and we took advantage of it.

Our participation in the pilot resulted in a new wrinkle being added to my weekly Wednesday routine as, unlike the paid service, the pilot requires participants to drop-off of their individual filled buckets, provided at no-cost, to one two locations. The official documentation regarding the pilot posted on the City of Rochester’s website succinctly, and accurately, describes the experience: “City staff will sign you in, weigh your bucket of food waste, empty it and hand it back to you so that you can continue to collect food waste and drop-off on a weekly basis.” It really was that simple and oddly enjoyable to view the scale numbers come up to judge growth from the previous week. I would envision that as we, and others, become more acclimated with the list of potentially compostable contents, the weekly weights will continue to rise.

I also observed another possible benefits of the nescient pilot: the potential to extend beyond the possibility of further limiting greenhouses gases and into community and culture building. The professionals staffing the table were very helpful in assisting/educating folks with navigating the process if there was any confusion. As these were the same folks as the previous week, and only the second week of drop-off, it was nice that they remembered who I was and created a nice opportunity for developing a sense of community among the composters. (They engaged the person who stopped in immediately after me, so this interaction did feel felt sincere.)

This new opportunity is a far cry from the chicken wire pit we put up 12(!) years ago, and though we still use the compost bin for grass clipping and leaves, the opportunity to have food waste taken away is for composting eliminates the possible concerns of rodents and bugs finding there ways into the yard. As with any pilot, there are sure to be hiccups and challenges to be addressed and systems to be refined (thus the term "pilot"). However, two weeks into the pilot, the program, and culture building around composting, is to off to a solid start.

Turning, Spreading, Mixing

Nearly a week, and a few days rain, after prepping
the gardens, the opportunity presented itself to lay
 the vegetable plants in the soil. (6/5/16)

Another late spring and another go round with our vegetable garden. With each passing year the seasons come more quickly and it feels as though (too) shortly after pulling up stakes and turning over dirt in October, comes time to turn over the soil again and reappoint certain sections as tomato territory and cucumber lane. As is our tradition, I usually wake up early, around 6 a.m., to weed and prepare the bed, while my wife plans and plants. Slipping neatly into our archetypal roles, I, as the man, am the destroyer and my wife is the nurturer.

This year, Memorial Day weekend once again proved to be the first time our other individual activities gave way just enough to create the opportunity to work together in the yard. Though the images look roughly the same each year (so, maybe the house was a different color last year, or the bed inched out a little further this year), the transformation from weed bed to vegetable garden is a rewarding one even before the vegetables take root.

Rather than cutting down the length of the weeds and grass,
 not mowing allowed for an easier grasp for yanking out roots.
(5/30/16)

Once used a roto-tiller, but preferred a
pitchfork and my hands to turn the soil and extract the
invasive weeds; it's a small enough area and it feels good to
get dirty. (5/30/16)

With the overgrown weeds, removed, a bag of
compost left over from the previous summer comes into view
as things begin to take shape. (5/30/16)

Ready for the annual mixing of compost, both earned
through our recycling efforts with Community Composting
and self-generated in the corner composter. (5/30/16)

Spreading, mixing and turning. (5/30/16)

Ready to receive whatever vegetables milady
wishes to grow this summer. (5/30/16)

Yeah--We're in the Pilot!

In the mail yesterday, we received notification from the City of Rochester that our neighborhood would be part of an upcoming Single Stream Recycling pilot. Currently, we are required to separate out select recyclables into paper and plastic/glass containers (or, in most cases, the city's sanitation staff need to do so when emptying the containers). As a family that generates more recyclable waste (including compostable waste which we pay a fee to have picked up weekly by Community Composting, Inc.) than "garbage," this is exciting news as we continue looking for ways to minimize our footprint.

It is great to see our local municipality continuing to pilot (with an eye towards wide-spread implementation) ways to make recycling easier and more convenient!

Continuing Our Composting Campaign

Something old for something new (-ish). (3/15/14)

Things change. As you get oder, I've learned, things change more quickly than one can imagine. The reminder of this truth I came across this week had to do with the evolution of our home composting here in River City. Long an advocate for sustainability, it was my wife who prompted me, along with our sons, to erect an outdoor composting pit made of chicken wire and metal posts behind our shed nearly ten years ago.

The original pit in action.
(11/21/2009)

Six falls later (and numerous leaves) later in August 2005, we took another step, adding a raised plastic cube composting bin in our backyard, primarily for kitchen waste. This second pit, a Deluxe Pyramid Composter,  became our primary receptacle for eggshells, fruit/vegetable skins and rinds, and compostable coffee filters, while we continued to use the larger original one for leaves and grass clippings. Along the way, we experimented with coir fillers and compostable bags with varying degrees of success. (FYI: not all bags which are said to decompose in a reasonable amount of time do--more often than not they seem just to muck of the pitchfork teeth when attempts to turn the pit are made.)

Now, after maintaining a five-year, two-composter status quo (in the intervening years I also installed a rainwater barrel to our house's gutter system), we have taken another step in our journey toward a measure of sustainability. (Recognize that the "we" is used in the most royal of senses--my wife does the thinking and I do the leg work--well, most of it.)  Three weeks ago my wife and I took another step toward more sensible sustainability ... by joining Community Composting in Rochester, New York.

Into the Deluxe Pyramid Composter.
(9/1/2012)

The way it works is very simple: we save our kitchen waste, or scraps, (the amount of which actually increases due to their ability to compost more complex materials than we can in our backyard) in a green plastic container and leave it our on the stoop each collection day. One of the systemic benefits of living in the city, all regular garbage, including standard recyclables are picked up on the same schedule as our little green bin.. With this past Thursday collection, we also experienced our first swap with Community Composting--they collected our green bin, left us a clean one and left a similarly sized white bin with compost for our use. This is just one possible outcome, the receipt of compost for personal gardening, with another possibility being the donation of the compost generated to community gardens and neighborhood associations.

There is a fee involved, but for those who do elect to participate, there is the satisfaction of contributing to a reduction in the loop of food to waste to food. Given the volume of leaves and clippings our small city tad somehow generates, our participation in Community Composting is not a replacement for the other things we have done in the past, but is just another way we can refine the process so it works best (or easiest) for us.

Compostin'!

Something wicked is boiling in the pit! (6/03/13)

I had an early start this year to preparing the gardens. Unfortunately, that early start no longer seems so "early" and I am left needing to re-weed and return eh garden beds before planting any vegetables. I did, however, spend last evening tending to our compost pit, which in some way equates to gardening. Despite the appearance in the picture above, I had already weeded the nascent beds once, but as you can see, will need to do so again before formally kicking off my summer break gardening season.



Guess who didn't eat their green apple in tehir lunch last week. (6/03/13)

Currently, we use a Deluxe Pyramid Composter. The lid is hinged so you can open it with one hand, yet it can’t blow away though I use a brick to keep any prying critters from gaining entry. It is fairly large and surpassingly unassuming, holds nearly 12 cubic feet. A quick look inside revealed that it was time to turn over the cuttings in anticipation of using some fresh compost in the next few weeks. The interior did not just look unpromising, it was downright gross!



Coconut coire bricks + rainwater = satisfying garden experinece. (6/03/13)

Because there has not been many grass clippings to add to the composter in recent weeks, there is clearly a need to add some "greens" or, more specifically, "browns." Once the grass grows more fully, I should have more clippings to mix into the composter. Until then, we'll rely on the coconut coir bricks that my wife bought last year. Using the coir also gives me a chance to use the rain water recently collected in our rain barrel. It has been rainy of late and it is a satisfying exercise to use the rain water in tending our composting pit.




Mixing in the re-hydrated coir. (6/03/13)

Coir is the coarse fibers extracted from the outer shell of a coconut.  Last spring, my wife ordered a large box of "bricks." from an oknline garden store. By soaking the compressed bricks, they expand 5 to 7 times in volume. The intnetion is to use the carbon-rich coir to mainatin the approiate balance necessary fro compsointg nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps in the compost pile. Ideally, this also speeds up the composting process and improves the quality of the compost.

Niiiice! (6/03/13)

The dark, nutrient rich lower levels of the compost pit would seem to indicate that things are working rather well. I have done my best to turnover and add coir during the winter months, though other activities often get in the way.

(6/03/13)

If you were to explore any number of online gardening catalogs, you would find many bells-and-whistles available for purchase that are made to appear as though they are necessary for good composting. One such item would be the tabletop composter bags. We have a ceramic table top composter in our kitchen that we empty into the larger, outdoor compositor once or twice weekly. Ina n effort to make this transfer easier (and less messy), we purchased some decomposing bags.

Unfortunately, after two years of use, and multiple opportunities to pick them out of the compost heap, I have come to the conclusion that, despite the fact that these bags will decompose, the rate at which they do makes them more of a nuisance than a help. At this point the practice is this: when turning over the pit, I extract and collect the partially decompsing bags and dispose of them in the traditional waste basket. There, they can decompose slowly and not impair my ability to turn over the contents more easily.

Given the rich brown dirt, I am very excited to properly further prep and plant our vegetable gardens, an activity I look very forward to continuing in earnest this coming weekend.

Fall Compost Cookin'

The contents of our small composting bin on September 29, 2012.

These past two weekends, between coaching seasons, have been highly productive ones at home. In addition to raking the yards and getting the leaves to the curb just in time for municipal pick-up, I've also been able to begin winterizing a number of different garden projects. One of the more extensive projects my family and I have worked on over the past six(!) years is continuing to compost our kitchen waste and garden clippings, using two different composting "pits." There is a larger homemade one at the back of our yard behind the shed, and a smaller one we started last summer (pictured to the left).



Our small garden composting
bin prior to fall clean-up (11/06/12).

Composting, converting household organic waste into a soil amendment, contributes nutrients to in garden soil while also improving its structure. Because "more than half of the municipal solid waste collected in 2009 was compostable," according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data, composting also reduces the amount of landfill waste. In our family's case, especially when our kids were younger, it also provides an opportunity to teach a little science and sustainability.

Over the years, composting has become much less a task we have added to our "things to do in the garden" list and much more something we habitually do, much like trimming bushes or cutting the grass.

Though less a function of winterizing and more a role of ongoing maintenance, one of the jobs I tasked myself with last weekend was turning over the contents of the compost bin and evaluating the balance of "ingredients" to ensure that the contents of the bin will be usable in the spring. Turning the contents over is something I do regularly, as is adding "browns," and the fall is a perfect time to also add some of the many leaves which find their way into our yard.

September was the last time, prior to last weekend, that I had done any "work" with the bin. As you can see from the image at the top of the post, there was quite a bit of recent kitchen waste on the surface of the contents, including a number (supposedly) decomposable bags used in our counter top composter. Because there was "too much green and too little brown," I opted to mix in some compost bricks to amend the contents slightly in an effort to maintain a level of balance among ingredients.



Preparing Coconut Coir with rain barrel water.

My wife ordered a number of supplies to assist in maintaining our composting , including the aforementioned and bags and Coconut Coir bricks. These prepared contents of these compressed bricks replace peat moss and help to "cook" the contents of the composter.To prepare the brick for addition into the bin, I generally use rainwater (from our rainwater barrel) . Each brick can hold up to 10 times its volume in water.



Almost ready for addition to "the mix."

After mixing the contents of the small bucket well, the next step is easy: simply dump it in the composter and mix it up...


September 29, 2012, before.

About a month-and-a-half later, I returned to the composting bin to inspect its contents. As you can see from the image below, a number of houseplants and bags of household kitchen waste had found their way to the bin. Additionally, some the vegetables from our garden that had fallen from the plant and been sampled by neighborhood critters were also added periodically.

November 9, 2012.

After raking the leaves from the garden (which is sectioned off by a small white wire fence so that our dog can't get in and go to the potty), I added some leaves and more tomatoes that never made it to harvest.

November 9, 2012.

Once an appropriate amount of leaves have been added, I then turn over the contents of the bin with a pitch fork to aerate and better combine the cooking "ingredients." I generally also pull out any sticks or compostable bags that don't appear to be decomposing. I'm not sure this is necessary, they just tend to stick into the pitchfork and make a relatively easy task unnecessarily frustrating.

November 9, 2012.

Before winter really settles in, I'll likely repeat the steps once or twice, especially as long as there remain leaves on the trees to rake up. Much like cutting the grass or raking the leaves, there is something very rewarding about composting, a feeling which will be further experienced in the spring when we have some fresh useable compost to add to our small garden. Though its something of a "slow cooker" I have come to greatly enjoy the process of cooking compost.

New Adventures in Composting, Part 1

One thing I set out to accomplish this summer was to setup a second composting pit in our backyard, primarily for "wet waste," while transitioning away from our initial pit which would continue to hold overflow dry (or leaf) waste. For the past four(!) years, we have been using the pit pictured to the right, that my son and I constructed with metal posts and fencing.

Given the significant amount of leaves that find there way into our yard each fall (as seen here, it has worked well to consistently generate good compost for use in our gardens the past few years. Previously, this is also where we would deposit kitchen waste such as eggshells, fruit/vegetable skins and rinds, and compostable coffee filters, among other things. Located behind our small shed, it is tucked away behind a tree, mostly out of view... except if you live in the house backing up to the right back corner of the yard.

Thanks to fencing, tree branches and a wild vine, to this point it has not been an issue. But, last summer a young couple moved in and after removing some of the obstructive vegetation, it became semi-visible to anyone sitting in their dining room. It's not as though they came and complained (in fact, other than offering to fix the fence, they've said nothing) but my wife and I could tell that this was the case given the pit's proximity and height. This would especially be this case in winter during which time the whole area would be snow covered, except for the freshly deposited compostable materials dropped in the clean white snow every few days.

Last winter, my wife and I committed to exploring an alternate method of composting that would put the neighbors so "out." Initially, I liked the idea of the plastic tumblers that were (are?) briefly in vogue for urban composters. These, however, seemed to lack a solid construct at a sensible price. After some deliberation, my wife researched, found and bought the little beauty to the right online, a solid plastic composting bin, requiring only minimal (easy enough for me!) assembly, and best of all it has a cover and blends in nicely with our garden.

But, as with all new things, the use of the plastic cube composter raised some additional questions of it's own...

Green Projects: "Building" a Compost Pit!

My stepson wotking our compost pit in Spring 2008. Below to the right is  "the pit" as it stands today... ripe with nutrient rich soil!
It's been raining out quite a bit the past few days (or been unbearably humid for this Northerner), so without much new to share I figured I'd dig into the "archives" and re-present a related past post (with some minor updates)...

Last weekend, Anne and I began our 2009 gardening "season" by preparing the garden bed by turning over the soil, removing, any weeds, and re-energizing the existing dirt with nutrient rich compost from our compost pit; a project my sons and I work on almost four(!) years ago now.

Three springs ago, following a Sunday morning at church (of all places), I was struck with the desire to build a composting pit in our backyard. My family and I have done quite a few "sustainable living" projects already that summer, including starting a small urban vegetable garden (three varieties of peppers and New Yorker tomatoes) and continuing our practice of not using pesticides in our flower gardens.

The next logical step seemed to be building a new composting pit. My wife and I each had maintained smaller pits at our respective previous homes, and after being at the new house for a summer and a half, we both figured that it was time to get to work. I set to clearing away a 4'x4' area in our backyard in between the shed and wood pile. After clearing some old fencing that had been left by the previous owner, I went the greenhouse (which in truth is a shoddy addition to the hurricane doors which I insist on referring to as "the greenhouse" because it just sounds cool to me) and see what materials we had on hand to get the job done. We had all the making of a composting pit (nothing fancy), but certainly a sincere backyard composter could be built with what was on hand.

Building an Outdoor Composting Pit

This Sunday morning after church, I was struck with the desire to build a composting pit in my backyard. My family and I have done quite a few "sustainable living" living projects this summer, including starting a small urban vegetable garden (three varieties of peppers and New Yorker tomatoes) and continuing our practice of not using pesticides in our flower gardens.

The next step was building a new composting pit. My wife and I each had one at our respective previous homes, and after being here for a summer and a half it was time to get to work. I set to clearing away a 4'x4' area in our backyard in between the shed and wood pile. After clearing some old fencing that had been left by the previous owner, I went the greenhouse (which in truth is a shoddy addition to the hurricane doors which I insist on referring to as "the greenhouse" because it just sounds cool to me) and see what materials we had on hand to get the job done. We had all the making of a composting pit (nothing fancy), but certainly a sincere backyard composter could be built with what was on hand.

For the uninitiated, there are many benefits to composting:

1. Reduces the cost of getting rid of your garbage--especially when you pay by the bag.
2. Reduces the stink in your garbage bags. With all that wet stuff gone, your trash is lighter and less putrid.
3. Reduce global warming. Food decomposing in the landfill produces methane, a supercharged greenhouse gas; in your backyard compost bin it doesn't
4. Saves space for longer-lived landfills.
5. Produces great soil amendment for your garden.
6. Returns nutrients to the soil such as phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, zinc, manganese, iron and boron.
7. When added to the soil compost helps promote root development, enhances retention of water and nutrients, and makes the soil easier to cultivate.
8. When used on the surface of the soil as mulch, compost reduces rainfall run-off, decreases water evaporation from the soil, and helps to control weeds.
9. And more!

Another great benefit to this project was that each member of our family contributed in its being built: the boys helped with staking and tool collecting, my daughter cut and set up the chicken wire and my wife assisted in the design and adjusting the post tabs to be used in securing the chicken wire. Again, nothing fancy, but I must confess to a great deal of satisfaction upon its completion, especially the manner in which it was built.

If you're looking for a family project that will bring you some pleasant family memories and contribute to preserving our environment I would recommend building a composting pit. The Fall season will be here (in Upstate New York, anyway) before you know it and that, combined kitchen degradables, should help get you started toward preparing garden resources for next year.

Now if anyone could recommend a good counter top composter for our kitchen... ;-)

Summer Roadie Notes 4: Cottage Notes

There is a first time for everything, and having never stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, it was time to do the B&B "thang." The B&B Ann and I stayed at was just outside of Ithaca proper and was constructed with stones from the nearby quarry. Sometimes you have to read the tea leaves, or look carefully for the messages that are hiding in your environment, and this was the case in our little stone cottage. There were two interesting opportunities to do just that.

Things with messages in our little stone cottage:

First, on a shelf in the kitchenette was a small plastic container about the size of a small cooler which had been labeled neatly with black marker “COMPOST.” Laminated and heavily taped below were directions:

What to Compost
Kitchen Greens: fruit scraps, vegetable scraps, houseplant cuttings, coffee grounds, rice & pasta, egg shells, tea bags
Kitchen Browns: coffee filters, stale bread, paper napkins & towels, dryer lint, hair

Don’t Compost
Meat, fish or bones, diary products, oils or fats, sauces, ashes, pet waste, diseased plants, matures weeds with seeds

Each of the directions was accompanied by a crude illustration depicting the “do’s and don’ts”, and inside the composter it was primed for action with a single paper towel in which to put all the compostables…

By the end of our stay one day later, we had contributed one coffee filter, grounds, and a partially eaten tomato to the cause. I also will be looking into composting at home, too.

Secondly, the mugs were talking, too. Specifically, the coffee cups we used in the morning (whoever made the cups did not check the capitalization as after each line "return", the computer capitalized the first word of the next line, unnecessarily. I guess an English teacher doesn’t take the summer off! ;-)

The message printed on them as as follows:

The Finger Lakes Region of New York State
Taughannock Falls
Located in a State Park seven miles north of Ithaca,
NY this 215 foot high waterfall plunges into a 400 hundred foot
Deep natural amphitheater. Taughnannock Falls is
Higher than Niagara and is the highest waterfalls east
Of the Mississippi. It was called Taghkanic, or Great
Fall in the Woods, by the Indians.

We went into this roadie with no real plan, but thanks to the mugs, we would soon be on our way to Taughannock State Park, just outside of Ithaca smack-dab in the middle of the western side of Cayuga Lake's Wine Trail...