Composting stories from my estate’s community garden: The Story of Compost Heaps ‘Alpha’ & ‘Tall Gamma’
Two garden beds in my estate’s community garden looked relatively abandoned. Neighbour E, who cared for them, was suddenly less available to tend to the garden. With the beds already cleared of harvested plants, creeping-type grass started growing on the exposed soil.
While discussing with other neighbours on what to do with these beds while he was away, one idea came up — we have a lot of leafy vegetable seeds (thanks to the local community gardens’ nation-wide initiative), but the soil was not considered to be suitable to grow leafy vegetables. Looking at the grass that grew (there was not much else except for the rare mimosa), the soil could do with a lot more microbial life to support the healthy growth of a greater diversity plants, including leafy vegetables.
Neighbour M tried to protect the soil at these beds by adding big dried leaves. She welcomed help to mulch the beds properly as she didn’t have the capacity to do more. I cut up some of the larger leaves to form a thick layer of smaller leaf bits. This gave me an idea that I could start compost heaps at one end of the beds, and use some of the composting material as mulch material too.
Compost Heap ‘Alpha’
I created a compost heap at the end of one of the garden beds, and nicknamed it ‘Alpha’ after a few weeks. While I had created various compost heaps in this garden before, ‘Alpha’ is the first heap where I use wire mesh (aka, hardware cloth) to contain the composting contents. The wire mesh had a circumference of about 1.5m, and a height of about 1m.
For the heap’s carbon-rich material, I used a lot of dried leaves which we have plenty, as well as untreated wood shavings which were rescued from a woodwork company that works only with Singapore street trees. For nitrogen-rich material, I used fresh garden trimmings (again, plenty!), as well as food scraps rescued from homes, a hotel, a pancake stall, and a market.
To provide natural protection from the heavy rain, I added some palm leaves to the top of the heap. And added netting at the top of the mesh. The netting may not be helpful with withholding water from heavy rain. From experience, it can be helpful for indicating to passerby that the contents are being cared for.
Compost heap Alpha did well. Within days, the wood shavings was a darker colour, food scraps had disappeared, and the inside temperature was about 54.5 deg C. After a few more days, the heap shrunk to at least 1/3 the original height. I sensed that it could take in a lot more food scraps.
On a weekly to bi-weekly basis, I added food scraps to compost heap Alpha. On one occasion, I had ~15kg of food scraps. These were rescued from a nearby market for use in a composting workshop at a school. The school’s workshop was cancelled at last minute and I didn’t want the fresh material to go to waste. That was when I decided to create a new compost heap, which I nicknamed ‘Beta’.
Beta never got to become a mid-sized heap like Alpha. It was taken apart soon after its creation.
The loss of both ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ happened at the same time. Unfortunately, it happened because I have a poor grasp of spoken Mandarin!
Compost Heap ‘Tall Gamma’
Neighbour E freed up some time to be at the garden. When we chanced upon each other, I mentioned that I was helping to make the soil better and can move the compost heaps to other parts of the garden, or leave the heaps there. And then I left him to do his thing while I chatted with another friend.
Neighbour must have misunderstood me for he used the composting material to amend soil in the garden beds, and used the wire mesh of both Alpha and Beta to ringfence one of them to protect the bed from pets!
All is well as I’m glad that E has more capacity to be at the garden. Thankful for the reminder to make sure that 2-way communication is done well.
In any case, this gave me the opportunity to consider using another wire mesh that was donated by another neighbour. This wire mesh was sitting in the garden for several months. I noticed that the metal was of good quality in that it barely rusted, and the mesh had no sharp edges. But it looked entangled and also rather tall, which was why all of us left it alone — until now.
With a measuring tape and a wire cutter and some heavy pails and space to spread it all out, I was all set. I was surprised that the mesh was in rather good condition. It was super hard to cut! I must have reduced the lifespan of my tool by trying to cut the mesh. I decided to cut out a length of 1.5m. It was the same length of mesh for compost heaps Alpha and Beta. The only thing… this mesh is 3x taller.
Initially, I thought that maybe this height is okay, since more people are contributing home and workplace food scraps regularly. By doing this, we are able to compost more food (as well as our garden trimmings).
The experience of working with such a tall mesh was rather interesting. The task of composting suddenly seemed tedious. Layering materials and shifting fruit scraps if they fell too close to the edge was much more difficult for me.
Taking items out was also difficult. For example, we have a separate pile of dried leaves. After throwing some in, I realised that I had also thrown in a used mask and a mosquito repellent bottle! It was lucky that the heap wasn’t too tall, and I was able to lift the mesh to remove the bottle. I used a long branch to fish out the mask (eww…).
Because I had a variety of starting materials, I was able to finish the pile quickly. Here’s a photo of fruit pulp from another neighbour’s workplace canteen!
After the heap layering was complete, I then covered the mesh with a netting that used to be on Alpha. My neighbour left the netting at a corner of a garden bed because he didn’t understand the use for it 😛
I decided to call the new heap ‘Tall Gamma’.
Hope this arrangement works for now! Look forward to welcome neighbour(s) tomorrow. At least one wants to donate his home and workplace’s fruit scraps regularly, and wants to learn how to contribute 🙂
p/s: I enjoy composting more as an intentional, mindful practice. Will continue to work on smaller heaps, with small materials and lots of quiet time.
p/p/s: We have multiple compost heaps in the estate’s community garden now! Most are by another neighbour. I’m so glad that she’s seeing the benefits, and harvesting more fruits etc. This neighbour of mine commits herself to collecting tea dust from a family living in a nearby town once a week for composting. Thankful!
