Compost Hotspot

Our new Compost Hotspot is located at the Food Forest and provides hands-on education to island residents and GCA program participants on the full range of composting practices, tools, and available products. In addition, we compost organic wastes from GCA activities and partner restaurants in order to produce organic compost and fertilizers to support GCA agriculture.

Our compost facility demonstrates:

● Vermiculture, or worm composting- A vermiculture bin has been built from a repurposed bath tub, and filled with red-wrigglers (Eisenia fetida), and used to produce high-value worm casting fertilizer for use in the Food Forest.

● DIY Hot and Passive composting-A 3-bin composting system has been constructed out of locally-available new and recycled materials, and is used to demonstrate both hot and passive (cold) composting.

● Bokashi composting- Bokashi bins, which rely on microorganisms present in bokashi bran to produce high-value compost through fermentation.

● Commercially Available Composters-we have a wide variety of plastic composting bins, tumblers, and digesters that are available on the market for people who do not wish to design and build their own, and we are happy to discuss the pros and cons of each.

● Compost Tea-A commercial scale compost tea aerator is installed to demonstrate the brewing and use of compost tea from worm castings and bokashi compost.

● Styrofoam composting-Recent scientific findings have shown that meal worms (Tenebrio molitor), and superworms (Zophobas morio) are capable of breaking down the complex polystyrene in styrofoam, resulting in organic castings that are biodegradable; a terrarium is maintained on site to aid the composting of old styrofoam planters from our plant nursery.

Our Compost Hotspot was made possible through funding from the GVSCU