Composting

We create a lot of green waste through our gardening projects. This is added to our compost bins and left to rot down.

Meanwhile in our polytunnel we have a row of ‘hot beds’. The beds are filled with woodchip and waste coffee granules and ‘watered’ with the biodigester effluent. We use this mixture to help create a sterile compost when mixed with the sieved rotted green waste. The bark works instead of peat, allowing air into the compost and we just add sand to the mix, before bagging to sell in our Farm Shop.

The hot beds really do heat up, often reaching 50 degrees in the centre! This has meant the New Leaf students can grow tomato plants outside in the polytunnel much earlier in the year.