At Glendale community garden, a compulsion for compost
It’s transition time at the Monterey Road Eco-Community Garden (West) in Glendale, and plot partners Lindsey Hansen and Tom Selling are putting in lettuce, peas, potatoes, onions and garlic. But before anything new got planted, they harvested their most important crop of the year: compost from a pair of stackable bins they got free from the Glendale Integrated Waste Management Section.
Hansen and Selling, at right, are part of a team of seven who have made composting a group project at the garden. Four more Integrated Waste Management compost bins are assembled, but they’re empty or filled with non-composting green waste.
In contrast, the bins of the composting team are full to the brim, an inch-thick layer of dried oak leaves on top. Hansen collected 30 bags of raked detritus from her grandmother’s backyard lawn to serve as a ready supply of material to keep the compost bins’ mixture aerobic and balanced, and the attention to detail has clearly paid off.
Photos: Ann Summa