Nutrient Recycling

Food scraps and yard waste form the second largest portion of what we throw away. Like us, plants "are what they eat". This means soil nutrients. Composting, viewed as nutrient reclamation, conserves a precious resource, the fertility of our soil.

Beardsley farm places a high priority on composting as a way of insuring the highest quality produce for our community and the future fertility of depleted urban soil. We have partnered with a number of local restaurants in this effort.

For well over a year we have collected coffee grounds from The Golden Roast Espresso Cafe on UT campus. Coffee grounds are one of the best things you can put in a compost pile. They have a nearly perfect carbon to nitrogen ratio which creates a favorable environment for the micro organisms which do most of the chemistry of composting.

Recently, La Costa on Market Square have been providing us with vegetable scraps. David (one of La Costa's kitchen staff) is seen here placing a few scraps of vegetable wast into one of their compost containers. The vegetables we receive from La Costa as well as the Tomato Head help us to create a nitrogen rich environment which helps micro-organisms build and multiply their bodies.

Carbon and nitrogen: these are the basics of life, for plants and for us. Carbon is fuel for biological processes, nitrogen is life's building materials. A good balance of these is essential for soil fertility. Since the microbes which do most of the work in decomposition require vastly more carbon than nitrogen it is important to be careful in the management of compost heaps. Too little carbon (which comes mostly from cellulose in plants, the stuff that gives them their structure and strength) and the pile goes "cold". A healthy pile can become surprisingly hot. At 120 degrees our pile enters its most biologically active phase. We have been able to maintain temperatures in excess of 140 degrees for days at a time. During such hot periods, microbes are busily eating and multiplying. As a by product they produce heat, (killing harmful microbes and seeds from yard waste), and most importantly, a great deal of free carbon and nitrogen which builds and fuels plants.


We are interested in teaching the public about the importance of composting. Recently, I visited the ecology club at West High School. The club are considering the possibility of composting at lunch at least one day a week. We talked about the technical and logistical considerations and I hope that they will succeed in starting a program by this spring.

Other educational institutions in the Knoxville area are already composting. The Earth Flag program teaches about recycling in many Knox County public schools. We collect finished compost from one of these-Pond Gap Elementary. Pond Gap does a great job composting well over 250 Lbs of cafeteria waste each week. Enough to fertilize their on site garden and to share with us, and thereby, with the greater community. We would like to extend appreciation to Pond Gap as their compost well established compost piles have provided us with much needed insect life. Insects also do a great deal of work in the compost pile by digesting bulkier materials and transforming them into usable nutrients.

If you are interested in learning more about composting or starting a pile please visit us here at Beardsley Farm.

Peace
Frank