Our composting workshop on 10th August was attended by a wide range of students and staff, including a group from Greening RMIT who wanted to check out our composting system. We had a talk on what compost is (decomposed organic material), why it's important (lots of reasons!), how to make it at home, and how we manage our system at the garden. We then had tea and snacks provided by Unimelb Sustainable Campus while we pottered around the garden talking all things compost and harvesting a few bits and pieces. Photos: University of Melbourne Sustainable Campus One of the best things about composting is that there are so many ways to do it! Even if you can't have a compost bin at home, there are plenty of other options. A worm farm provides a productive alternative, as long as you have the diligence to look after it well and can put it in a cool shady spot, while a Bokashi bin can be used inside your apartment! Or, if you've got the space but lack the patience for looking after a compost bin or worm farm, trench composting might be your answer. Trench composting is just what it sounds like: A hole dug directly into the garden that becomes a spot to bury food waste. It has the benefits of disguising odours and returning organic nutrients directly back to the earth. In addition, it's easy to create a trench composting plan that rotates waste by using different bury spots to stagger decomposition. Check out this infographic for more details on this, as well as tips on how to use food scraps in the garden without composting them (e.g. egg shells to deter slugs and snails). Don't forget that even if you can't compost at home, you can always take your scraps to a communal composting hub, like ours at the garden (though it is nearly at capacity!). There are also compost bins in the System Garden on campus, and some councils have community compost hubs that anyone can contribute to. Check out our beginners guide to composting below! Comments are closed.
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