Compost Update - June 17

Things are looking pretty good at the compost bins! The temperature today in the active pile was around 120°F, with some hotter areas! I gave the pile a good mix, removed some stickers and covered with more browns.

Reminder of the week: PLEASE REMOVE ALL STICKERS! Double-check your scraps before/while you're depositing them, remove any remaining stickers and place in the trash bin to your left. These stickers keep popping up wherever you look and will never degrade because they're made of plastic. Please redouble your efforts to avoid this nuisance!

The active bin is filling up quickly but the compost in the middle bin is not finished yet, so Marcelo dug a whole in our "bad soil" pile and transferred a good amount of compost into it so it can continue to mature there. He then mixed some of the soon to be finished compost with soil and we added the mixture to the potato bins, which are growing nicely. (Fore more on what's going on at the Kitchen Garden, see our blog).

Compost visitor

Earlier this week I made a quick visit to the compost bin and spotted a baby praying mantis in the middle bin. These are considered beneficial insects because they prey on other insects, but apparently some of the most abundant species in our area are non-native and quite voracious, eating both good and bad bugs. Let's hope this is one of the good ones!

- Gabriela.