Compost in the Cafeteria: Way to break it down.

By Jenn Halpin

Each and every morning during breakfast at the cafeteria students are scraping their plates clean into the Student Garden compost bin. Instead of sending food scraps to our local landfill, Dickinson students are working collectively to reduce waste on campus. All of the food scraps discarded at the cafeteria are incorporated into compost piles located at the Student Garden, which is later used to fertilize garden beds. This program has been underway since the beginning of February and will continue indefinitely. If all goes well, there is potential for the compost bin to be available during lunch and dinner as well!

So what exactly is compost? It is actually quite simple! By combining "waste" materials like grass clippings, coffee grinds, leftover food, hay, leaves, and basically any other organic material, you can create a soil amendment that adds invaluable nutrients to your garden soil. Like most good things in life, this miraculous transformation does not happen overnight. In fact, the average compost pile can take three to six months to "cure" or completely decompose.

Building and using compost piles is an age old recipe for successful organic and sustainable gardening. Plus, it is free!

Anyone can do it and at any scale; from large-scale agricultural production farms to the backyard gardener. In an era when soil fertilization practices are primarily focused on applying non-renewable mineral fertilizers as the sole supplier of plant nutrition, it does not take long for an environmentally conscious person to consider the benefits of making their own compost.

The basic rule of thumb in making any compost pile is to combine specific ratios of carbonaceous and nitrogenous materials together. Although the ratio of carbon to nitrogen will vary from gardener to gardener, we like to combine equal amounts of carbon (hay, dried leaves, dried crop residue) with nitrogen (grass clippings, food scraps, farm animal manure).

We layer these ingredients like you would layer a cake; in equal proportions. Adding a shovel full of soil or "cured" compost to the pile helps to introduce beneficial microorganisms that help your pile get started.

On average, compost piles should not be any smaller than 3x3x4. This will ensure that the pile will contain enough materials to help heat up the pile which is necessary for things to decompose. Believe it or not, a compost pile can reach temperatures of up to 120 degrees F! On cool crisp days,` it is easy to see a compost pile steaming. Keep your pile nice and moist, "like a wrung out rag" to support the decomposition process and try not to let it dry out! Turning compost piles is helpful but not imperative, cooler piles that are not regularly turned take longer to "compost" while hot pile that are turned regularly will break down faster. It is up to you! We are excited to involve the Dickinson campus in our efforts to create sustainable sources of fertility for our garden. We are encouraged by the level or support and participation by students and feel confident that this program will be a mainstay in the cafeteria! If you ever get inspired to try out your own compost pile, we encourage you to take the leap. There are great resources available on the subject, plus there are a handful of compost enthusiasts right down the road at the Student Garden!