Food scrap friday @Camdenville Public School

On 5th of May, I went to a community garden next to Camdenville Public School in Newtown, Sydney, NSW, to join one compost program called “Food Scraps Friday.”

In a public garden next to the school, the community and the school have compost bins and gardens to grow plants and veggies. People, including parents, take their food scraps from home to compost them every Friday morning.

The project is managed by school parents, Lachlan and Georgina, and some volunteers also help mixing the compost every week.

***• Adding lots of brown materials such as sawdust and stalks to keep compost healthy and breaking down the veggies scraps***

***• Each person uses the scale to measure and record how much food was composted on the link in QR code***

***• Here are the main type of compost bins.***

The bins are separated into - one to put new food scraps, and - one to grow mature compost with the sign of “Feed me. I’m hungry” or, when full, “I’m cooking.” This helps to grow compost more efficiently and make it easy to take out and to manage the compost bins.

There were also other types of compost bins in their garden.

***• Garden cuttings, pruning of plants, are composted in open bays***

The photo of the open bays above shows composting only for garden waste such as straw and fallen leaves. Food scraps are not allowed but coffee grounds are okay as rats don’t prefer it.

***• Another way to compost is to put bins, containers, pipes with holes, in planter beds so worms and nutrients can come and go from the compost to the adjoining soil to help grow the plants***

The compost bin is connected to the soil it is buried in so all the compost juice will nourish the garden bed.

There was also a scale to measure the weight of the food waste put in and recorded them on google docs, they can analyse it too.

Parents and other community members of the gardens have their own garden as well as some shared gardens. I found lots of kinds of vegetables including cucumbers, eggplants, chilis, thyme, basil, tomatoes.

Most of the ground was covered with grass and there were tropical trees with fruits in the outer edge of the garden.

In the shared garden, people grow some spices and veggies including bay leaves and garlic chives.

Georgina said she usually does not need to buy much of what food stores are selling, and members can pick up what they need and create no waste at the same time.

As the community garden is next to the Camdenville primary school, students also learn where the food and waste come from and how it can be composted to grow more food.

The Food Scraps program is held every Friday morning works as a place to connect with other residents and parents through composting and provides a place to learn about recycling and gardening.

I loved visiting the school and garden.

Coco the Composter