Blue Mountains News

Food scraps can provide both compost and liquid fertiliser! They don’t have to go out with the trash. At the Blackheath Community Kitchen Garden on the first Saturday of this month, when volunteers usually gather for veggie gardening, Carly an environmental officer with Blue Mountains City Council shared some tips on the best ways to compost or feed your food scraps to the worms.

One important tip she gave for speeding up recycling of food scraps, whether it is in a compost bin or a worm farm, is to chop them as small as possible. Questions ranged from where to site bins or worm farms, to how to stop vermin from invading the compost bin, to which scraps are best for each process and how long it takes for scraps to break down to useable compost or liquid fertiliser.

Carly demonstrated, with the help of participants, setting up and getting a new ‘cold’ compost round started – tree mulch, followed by a shovel full of old compost with lots of living organisms and then the ‘green’ vegie scraps was followed by twice as much ‘brown’ wood shavings and sawdust. Finally, water was added to kick off the breakdown process and the bin lid put in place.

Participants also built a worm farm by reusing two used polystyrene foam boxes. Poking holes in one and providing an outlet for liquid fertiliser in the other, before adding the coconut coir bedding for the worms.

A few went home with various prizes for remembering what ARRT was all about and all went home with answers to questions they had brought with them. 

Anyone is welcome to drop into the Community Kitchen Garden at 165 Wentworth Street to check out our composting bins and bays (both cold and hot composting) and worm farms and get answers to questions they might have. You can also drop in your veggie scraps if you don’t have your own compost bin or worm farm. Our gardening times are Wednesdays 10am – 12pm or 1^st and 3^rd  Saturdays 11am-1pm. We are open 10am till 4pm this Saturday 2nd March as part of the Edible garden Trail.