Can you believe it’s already August? Despite the vagaries of our Calgary weather, we’ve had one of our best growing seasons ever in the garden and we are excited to see what the rest of our summer holds!
The garden has three compost bins that were constructed from wood pallets. If you’ve ever created your own compost at home, you’ll realize that it needs a little TLC from time-to-time. The community garden uses a passive composting system, where we simply pile green (nitrogen-rich) and brown (carbon-rich) garden wastes into the bins. This is a slow decomposition process and oxygen and water are required for it to successfully happen. That means we need to turn the compost on a regular basis (a huge physical job made easier with the proper tools!) as well as add water to it if we don’t receive any rainfall. The other thing that helps accelerate the decomposition of all these plant wastes is to trim stalks and stems down to a couple of inches so that they break down more quickly. We do not add food scraps to our bins, and we absolutely don’t want pet wastes in them (it’s not safe in our cold, slow, passive system and we use the finished compost on edible plants). If we keep up with maintaining our compost bins, we’ll have plenty of nutrient-rich goodness to add to our garden beds next spring!
On June 17 we had the pleasure of hosting our first-ever Neighbour Day celebration at the garden. Several families registered for the children’s make and take planting project and the children had a blast decorating their paper containers and planting zucchini seeds to take home. We also had snacks and games. As always, keep an eye on our social media channels for information about when we are hosting public events at the garden and with the Somerset Bridlewood Community Association – don’t miss the chance to be a part of your community!
Sheryl Normandeau, Community Garden Director
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