Compost crisis: the dirty truth about peat ‘extractivism’ in Ireland https://www.allforgardening.com/1367180/compost-crisis-the-dirty-truth-about-peat-extractivism-in-ireland/ #compost #environment #garden #gardening #Ireland #legislation #Peat
Compost crisis: the dirty truth about peat ‘extractivism’ in Ireland https://www.allforgardening.com/1367180/compost-crisis-the-dirty-truth-about-peat-extractivism-in-ireland/ #compost #environment #garden #gardening #Ireland #legislation #Peat
Digging out the black gold. #Compost #Composting #Manure
Compost maturing in the pallet bays. I find making compost a very therapeutic process. #Compost #Composting #Gardening #Allotment
I composted in the city (Allston-Brighton area -- where we had a small backyard and garden area. It can be done in the cities, and worm-composters can be kept under the sink... But for the faint of heart, many places are now offering #GarbageToGarden services, or collection areas near community gardens...!
#Massachusetts Ask Your Municipality About a Low-Cost Compost Bin
"Many towns and cities use MassDEP grant funds to buy compost bins directly from manufacturers, then sell them to residents at a discount.
"To learn if the community where you live has compost bins for sale, see the List of Massachusetts Compost Bin Distribution Programs in Additional Resources [at the original link].
"The bins most commonly available are: #EarthMachine (with room for 10 cubic feet of material) and #NewAgeComposter (with a capacity of 24 cubic feet).
"Both units are easy to assemble, resist rodents, and break down organic materials well. At least half of the plastic that goes into them comes from products that consumers have used and recycled previously."
FMI:
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/ask-your-municipality-about-a-low-cost-compost-bin
#Mainers - Unfortunately, the deadline for purchasing this year has passed. But bug your municipality about buying in bulk for next year! [Similar programs exist in other states... I'll take a look-see after posting this.]
Maine Resource Recovery Association -
#Recycling and Solid Waste Management
2025 Spring Backyard #Composting Supply Sale
It's that time of year again! Put in your bulk order today!
Backyard Composting Supplies
- Kitchen Pail
Collect food scraps for easy transfer to your compost bin.
- Lobster Trap Composter
Available in both a 3 and 4 foot size. Ideal for grass clippings, leaves, garden and food scraps. Comes with rings to assemble. Hog ring pliers are also available to order. MADE IN MAINE.
- REOTEMP Thermometer
Designed with a 20 inch stem this device is perfect for monitoring the interior temperature of your compost.
- #EarthMachine [I own two of these...]
80 gallon composting bin that converts, grass, leaves, and table scraps into an abundant supply of rich garden soil.
- Wingdigger
Use this handy tool to turn your compost. [I use a garden fork for that]
- #RainBarrell
55 gallon capacity, collects rain water for your garden.
- Backyard #Compost Guide
#Recycling Containers and Carts
roll offs
- Recycling Carts
Easy handling curbside cart comes in 35, 64, 96 gallon sizes. Carts have excellent balance and stability. They are available in various colors.
- Recycling Bin
18 gallon curbside recycler for paper, cans, glass, plastics, etc. Holds up to 80 pounds, and allows for drainage of any liquids.
Contact us to order."
https://mrra.net/home/products/
#SolarpunkSunday #Composting
#ReducingWaste #Landfills
#Maine #Recycling #MRRA #BackyardComposting #FoodWaste #FoodWasteComposting #RainwaterCollection
So, my neighbor (who is on our town's select board) made the excellent suggestion that places that are more rural should invest in providing low-cost or free composters for folks to compost their own food waste (something that #ecomaine encourages)! Some more urban areas use #GarbageToGarden or #WeCompostIt services [see next post] to deal with food waste, which is sometimes where #Agricycle gets involved! #EcoMaine has been partnering with Agricycle since 2016!
Ecomaine Launches Food Waste Recovery Service
Maine Public | By Patty Wight
Published September 7, 2016
"Open up a refrigerator and the chances of finding limp lettuce or soggy squash are pretty high. Here in the U.S., it’s likely that this food will find its way into the garbage — according to the USDA, at least 30 percent of the nation’s food supply is wasted.
"A new program launched Wednesday by ecomaine aims to get that food out of the trash and give it a second life as #compost or energy.
"When confronted with produce past its prime, says ecomaine’s CEO Kevin Roche, there’s really one major roadblock that steers people toward dropping it in the trash versus a compost bucket.
" 'The ‘ick’ factor is what I call it,' he says.
"Rotten food is messy, it smells and it attracts fruit flies. But Roche says ecomaine now has a unique way to manage the ick factor: by sealing that food waste in a clear plastic bag.
" 'You go to the grocery store, and when you buy your oranges or your head of broccoli, and the first thing you usually do is put it in a clear bag. And we feel that could be an avenue for us to contain the ick factor and get a second use out of that plastic bag,' he says.
"Starting Wednesday, ecomaine accepts food waste knotted up in plastic bags. Ecomaine doesn’t collect the bags itself. It consolidates waste picked up by commercial services, such as Garbage to Garden or #WeCompostIt!, at a cost of about $55 a ton.
"On Wednesday morning, a collection truck from #AgriCycleEnergy unloads a giant salad of rotten corn, peppers, tomatoes and other produce at ecomaine’s facility in Portland.
" 'We’re collecting from restaurants, colleges, hospitals, and a variety of other generators of food waste,' says Dan Bell, manager at Agri-Cycle Energy in #ExeterMaine, where all of this produce consolidated at ecomaine will eventually go.
" 'A special machine at Agri-Cycle Energy removes the plastic bags, which are returned to ecomaine to be burned for electricity. The food waste, meanwhile, is blended with an equal amount of cow #manure from a nearby dairy farm, then heated and churned for about 30 days using a process called anaerobic digestion.
" 'We have two large domes, and it’s essentially enclosed, so we’re capturing all of the gases in the process of breaking down food waste,' Bell says.
"The #biogas is used to produce heat and electricity. And the food waste, he says Bell, turns into #fertilizer and animal bedding.
" 'This is material that’s been in the waste stream forever. And it always will be. And it’ll always be something that has to be handled. But pulling it out and removing it and source separating it allows companies like ours and other #digesters across the country to put that material to work for us, versus just sitting in a landfill,' he says.
"Because food generally doesn’t break down in landfills. A couple years ago, Roche says ecomaine dug down into one of its landfills.
" 'We found chicken breasts that were 25 years old, tomatoes, Ruffles potato chips that were 25 years old,' he says.
"Roche says businesses and consumers can prevent food waste through correct planning. But when lost or forgotten food is discovered in the dark recesses of a fridge, that’s where ecomaine’s food waste recovery program comes in.
"Initially, he says, it won’t account for a huge chunk of what ecomaine processes, which amounts to 170,000 tons of trash and 45,000 tons of recycling per year.
" 'Even if we can get upwards of five tons a year, we feel that would be a good start to our program,' Roche says.
"It’s an important step, he says, toward reaching Maine’s statewide recycling goal of 50 percent by 2021."
[I'm wondering how close Maine is to that goal?]
RHS
"Recycling your garden waste into home-made compost is both easy and environmentally friendly. Here we look at the basics of making this valuable soil improver and mulch."
https://www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/composting
Oh yeah! New 3 bay #compost bin to replace the old one made of pallets. Fancy!
https://www.europesays.com/uk/237764/ Should bioplastics be counted as compost? Debate pits farmers against manufacturers #AnimalMaterial #bioplastic #California #chemical #company #compost #crop #Environment #farmer #FoodWaste #GregPryor #NutrientRichSoil #plastic #PlasticInstitute #Product #Science #ToxicChemical #UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.europesays.com/us/38372/ Should bioplastics be counted as compost? Debate pits farmers against manufacturers #AnimalMaterial #bioplastic #california #chemical #Company #compost #crop #Environment #farmer #FoodWaste #GregPryor #NutrientRichSoil #plastic #PlasticInstitute #product #Science #ToxicChemical #UnitedStates #UnitedStates #US
The ancestors of the #Menominee Indian Tribe of #Wisconsin built earthen mounds to grow crops. The site could be the largest preserved archaeological field system in the eastern United States
by Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent
June 10, 2025
"Hundreds of years before the arrival of the first Europeans, #Indigenous farmers were growing crops like squash, corn and beans in earthen mounds they built on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
"The mounds—created by the ancestors of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin—likely represent the largest preserved archaeological field system in the eastern United States, according to a study published this month in the journal Science.
"Archaeologists discovered the mounds in May 2023 during the brief window between winter and spring. The winter snow had melted, but the leaves had not yet appeared on the trees. They surveyed 330 acres using a drone equipped with a laser that mapped subtle features on the surface—a remote sensing technique known as lidar.
"The team mapped an area that has cultural and historical importance to the Menominee. Located along the #MenomineeRiver on the #MichiganWisconsin border, this region is known as #AnaemOmot, or the 'Dog’s Belly.'
"The lidar uncovered a quilt-like pattern of parallel ridges that range from four to 12 inches tall. The mounds extend beyond the study area, suggesting the ancestral Menominee agricultural system was ten times larger than previously thought.
"The fact that the mounds still exist is unusual.
" 'Most field systems have been either lost or destroyed due to intensive land use across most of North America, through farming, including pastures and the cutting down of trees for urban development,' says co-author Jesse Casana, an anthropologist at Dartmouth College, in a statement.
"The research gives scientists a 'little window' into what #PreColonial life was like for the ancestral #MenomineePeople, Casana adds.
"During their excavations, the scientists also found several artifacts, including charcoal and fragments of broken ceramics. These discoveries suggest that the area’s Indigenous farmers may have dumped their household waste and the remnants of fires onto their fields, using them as #compost. Samples taken from the mounds suggest the farmers enriched the dirt with soil from nearby wetlands.
"The results indicate that ancestral Menominee people dedicated a lot of time and energy to agriculture in a remote area. The team has not found any significant settlement sites in the region—only a few small villages.
" 'It requires a lot of labor to create these fields, to clear the forest,' says Susan Kooiman, an anthropologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville who was not involved with the research, to NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce. 'This is dense forest, now and then. To clear it, only with stone tools, is a lot of labor, a lot of work. … The amount of work, and just how far these fields extend, is beyond anything that I think people suspected was going on this far north in eastern North America.' "
I gave the hot compost another turn. It was still at 55°C but falling. The temperature was 42°C after the turn. The pile was watered to help the microbial activity build the temperature once more. #Compost #Composting #Allotment #Gardening
fyi important! #compost
The Compost Academy 2025 open!
https://www.compost.academy/the-program
Ever since struggling with our deficient soils this past winter, I’ve been on a mission to grow our #compost piles as quickly as possible with free materials. Starbucks will give you used coffee grounds if you ask and I also made friends with a woodworker who only uses untreated wood and gives me bags of sawdust. So there’s your nitrogen and your carbon. We also add kitchen scraps and Mexican sunflower aka “green manure”, a beautiful fast-growing plant rich in nitrogen & potassium. #gardening
Caught those two in our vegetable plot. They killed our peas, radish, lots of strawberries and some beans. Safely moved them to the vicinity of our #compost box, full of yummy food. Hope they won't come back.
They look like bank voles, Clethrionomys glareolus, but I'm not sure. Didn't extract their DNA for testing :)
#Glastonbury Festival:
#Anarchist #Gardeners Club
“Why eat the rich when you can just #compost them.”
Shangri-La’s hidden areas, #SonicBloom is an oasis away from the noise of the festival site that allows you to listen to music created by the natural world.
Photograph: David Levene
Was (nicht) fehlt: Ein radikal-linkes Magazin #compost, das sich wie #compact in menschenverachtender Weise gegen Minderheiten richtet, gegen sie hetzt und aufstachelt, aber mit dem Unterschied, daß diese Minderheiten nicht aus Marginalisierten, sondern aus Privilegierten (wie steuergeizige Überreiche und ihren korrupten Handlangern in der Politik) bestehen.
Instant-Verbot durch Innenminister samt Bestätigung durch höchste Gerichte in 3, 2, 1.. Jede. Verfxxxte. Wette.
The compost heap has had another turn. Outside to inside. It will heat up again to above 55°C and then I’ll let it cool down gradually. #Compost #Composting #Allotment #Gardening
Ok by now I'm sweating like crazy. The bay on the right has been moved to the middle. I've even mixed in new layers of woodchips to add extra carbon and watered every layer as some parts were very dry.
I accidentally also moved an ants nest, but it couldn't be helped.
#compost #composting #compostodon #permaculture #gardening #biodiversity
Eben über das Kompostbuch von Cahrles #Dowding gestolpert, kannte ich noch nicht. Dowding ist ja eigentlich schon ein No-Brainer, und Kompost ist eines meiner Lieblingsgartenthemen...
Aber bevor ich das jetzt spontanshoppe (bin SO kurz davor!), meine Frage an die gärtnernden Leseratten: Hat das schon wer gelesen, und isses gut?
Hätte vor dem unkontrollierten Spontankauf gern ein paar Meinungen dazu. ;)
https://www.buch7.de/produkt/kompost-charles-dowding/1050148391?ean=9783831050628