Andrew’s Nursery is working towards developing a new community composting program.

Goals of the Program:

The goal of this program is to direct compostable community resources towards compost piles that will be used directly to grow plants for a small scale, local plant nursery that grows edible and medicinal plants.

We’re hoping this program will help to develop long term, useful avenues for compostables that would otherwise not be utilized to their fullest extent.

Background:

We love growing plants in containers called Air Prune Trays. Generally the plants love to be grown this way.

Compost is the main ingredient we use to make potting soil to fill these containers with.

Currently we’ve become reliant on Oneida County’s municipal compost as a source for the fairly large amounts of compost we use to generate this growing media.

Generally the municipal compost is a good resource, but does leave some things to be desired. 

Getting Started:

We are currently looking for a handful of people to help pilot and develop this program. We’ll collaborate on getting the kinks worked out with an eye towards scaling it up in the next few years.

The Process:

Participants will bring their compostables to either my house or Old Path Farm and use provided supplies to get their compostables into piles.

We’ll work together to communicate about which available piles will be added to, as well as guidelines for how to incorporate your materials.

We will be using a static composting system, which just means that the piles will not be turned and will develop more slowly. This should result in more nutrient dense compost while also reducing unpleasant odors.

Static composting also make it very easy for people to compost as the only work involved is incorporating your material into the pile and covering it.

We’re looking to collect these two categories of compostables separately: 

1. Food scraps and grass clippings
2. Leaves, ideally shredded but can be whole.

It’s essential that grass clippings and leaves are completely free of chemical residues like herbicides etc.

Compensation:

Ideally we will develop a fair way to trade with you in exchange for your time and effort to haul and process your compostables. A trade for trees or plants from the nursery would be ideal.

Get In Touch:

email me at andrewsplantnursery @ gmail.com for more details if you’d like to participate.

Thank you!