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GARDENERS ENJOY COMPOST SANDWICH

Angel Street Permaculture gardeners, Leith Mansell and Tamara Bligh tell us how they convert waste into a resource...

Question - when does a compost heap resemble a sandwich?

Answer - when it’s built by the Angel Street community gardeners.

The sandwich method of composting was developed by the gardeners who have used it or the past eight years. It has the advantage of being simple to comprehend, simple to maintain and simple to use on both large and small scales. And it requires no turning. In fact, turning it releasses the heat and disturbs decomposer activity—too much human intervention.

Making the sandwich

1. The bread

Lay cardboard or a half-dozen sheets of newspaper—even natural cloth or material is fine to use—we call thsi the bread—it creates an edge

2. The filling

Next, the filling, the raw compostables such as vegetable and fruit scraps—preferably no fats or faeces or animal products at all—they need to be buried or garbaged elsewhere—any grain products including breakfast cereals are fine to add

3. The topping

The topping is carbon-based material, especially grass cuttings, straw, leavbes or green mulch from the garden.

These three steps are used every time compost is added to the pile.

The Angel Street system

We have three bays - necessary for a large system. We used only one pile in our backyard before introducing it to the garden. In the community garden only one bay is active at a time so the others have time to break down undisturbed. Generally, a bay takes approximatelyy six weeks to fill, even when we were collecting up to 15 boxes of waste from Macro Health Foods.

Before closing off the active bay, the one left undisturbed the longest requires emptying into the garden as fertiliiser. Some may be stored iin bins for later use. THis means each bay has three months to break down. Any clumps still not quite ready may be tossed into either of the other two bays for completion. Once empty, a few twigs on the very base can help aeration when starting the new bay compost heap.

The Angel Street Permaculture Garden is located on the corner of Harold and Angel Streets, Newtown, in inner-urban Sydney. The garden adjoins the rear of the Newtown high school and is open Sundays 1 to 3pm Autumn and Winter, 2 to 4pm Spring and Summer. Later, the opening days might be alternated Saturday/ Sunday.

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PAGE UPDATED... Sunday, 1 September 2002