The Day I Learned About Composting at the Community Garden

On a sunny Sunday, April 29, Greenwich Community Gardens teaches the secrets of composting. I admit that I was leery: I stayed away from the composting bins for weeks … big, smelly, strange. During the class I learned why composted soil is so valuable and why gardeners call it black gold. 

Simply put, composting transforms vegetable scraps and garden waste into nutrient-rich soil. The dark, rich, productive soil enriches tired soil and creates a foundational building block of a sustainable planet. 

Anitra gets us on board!
Photo source:
Miranda DeSantis 

The Sunday composting session, taught by Anitra Brooks Kocyba, makes the composting process straightforward.

Step 1. Bring kitchen and garden scraps to the community garden and deposit them in the appropriate compost bin. (In our community garden, that's bin 1, where the decomposition process begins.) What scraps are allowed? Egg shells, lettuce leaves, vegetable parings, cauliflower stems, coffee grounds, fruit rinds, garden trimmings, summer plants and fall leaves. No dyes, labels, meats, dairy or avocado pits.

Step 2. Once the kitchen and garden scraps are deposited in the bin, grab a pitchfork and turn over the ingredients. As Anitra turns over the ingredients in the bin, steam rises. Anitra plunges a large thermometer into the pile, and within seconds we see the temperature gauge rise 20-plus degrees over the surrounding air temperature.

Step 3. If the scraps include sweet fruit and thick rinds (e.g., cantaloupe, bananas, avocado), cut them into smaller pieces to make the turning-over easier. As summer arrives, take an extra step and layer the sweet scraps with leaves to discourage yellow jackets.

Black gold!
Photo source:
Creative Commons

Step 4. By the time the material reaches bin 3, it is a fine mulch-like soil. It's this fully composted soil that generates the nutrient-rich soil, the black gold that fuels sustainable gardens. It smells earthy, not spoiled or rotten. Anitra suggests we filter the material through a grate to separate items that have broken down from those that have not. We want the former.

Step 5. What about bin 2? Magic happens in bin 2. The composting team determines whether ingredients are decomposed enough to move from bin 1 to bin 2 or from bin 2 to bin 3. 

Being a convert to composting means I need to switch my kitchen habits. Instead of tossing away scraps, I need to save them (preferably in an odor-suppressing container). If the scraps I bring to the community garden can help produce black gold, increase my success with vegetables and help to build a sustainable planet, I'm all in. 

Still wondering whether soil and compost matter to our planet? Check out the April 18 cover story in the New York Times Magazine, "Can Dirt Save the Earth?"