Celebrate “culture” in agriculture & share skills like growing, cooking, canning
Composting at the university
Firstly, sorry my bad English. I am Brazilian, and here only a privileged few can use English fluently. = (
Well, I would like to relate my experience with composting leftovers from the restaurant at my university!
The project is done by students volunteers, and there is no leaders. We rely on the help of an employee of the university that gives much value to the project (he is on the photos). Each one is responsible for performing activities in one day a week, and when there is hard work we met all!
The composters are in the "horto" (would be a plant nursery) of University. This place is far away from local of daily activities, so I use a very pleasant means of transport:
These bikes are underused because there is only one point of get and return, and the maximum time is one hour of use. But for my needs it is perfect!
The bags with the skins of the vegetables go in a vehicle (from restaurant to horto). When they arrive we lay them on the plots and open.We intend to convince the others involved (the employee of restaurant) will not use more bags, and use more the vegetables, the husks are unnecessarily thick and there is a lot of waste. We just do not know very well how.
Then throw wood dust, coming from the city and laboratory animal house of University. The function is to reduce moisture and slurry production. Finally we cover everything with straw, that comes from cutting the grass on campus! The function is to aerate, its allowing the development of aerobic bacteria, which does not release methane, responsible for the bad smell.
These plots are idle for months. Naturally, some seeds sprout and come to fruition, the pumpkins are the most common!
Comment
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Comment by Jennifer on February 11, 2013 at 10:50am -
Évellin: I had never heard of araça and had to look it up. Now I want to try one! Unfortunately, I think there's no translation because it's so uncommon here. What does the fruit taste like? And yes, please do post pictures when you're planting!
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Comment by Évellin Keith Da Collina on February 8, 2013 at 6:33pm -
We intend grow native and fruit trees (cherry and araça, I fear that there is no translation), other trees also grow well in the region are guava, plum, peach, cherry and blackberry! I can post pictures of when we are planting!
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Comment by Jennifer on February 7, 2013 at 9:49am
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A university orchard sounds amazing. What would you grow?
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Comment by Évellin Keith Da Collina on February 7, 2013 at 8:52am
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Jennifer, thanks for the encouragement and interest!
Well, we reap the "fruits of chance" and took the compound of the piles. leave resting few more months, and then it is used in the normal activities of the garden. Now we are planning on doing an orchard near the house of students (one free housing, inside the university for low-income students), and use the humus to plant them!
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Comment by Jennifer on February 6, 2013 at 4:21pm
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Évellin: Thanks so much for sharing this. What a great example of how a small group of interested folks can band together and make change within a massive institution. And how cool to have a HOMEGROWN cohort in Brazil! So, once these plots have sat idle, what happens next? Do you collect the compost? Or mix in some soil and plant directly in the plots?
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