Monday, October 25, 2010 - What do you do with your compostable material?

As we go into the different offices to tend the clients' plants, one of the most frequent questions we get is 'What do you do with your compostable material?'

Each week, we harvest about 60 Litres of compostable material taken from the plants in our clients' offices. Some of this material is dead or dying leaves and flowers; but easily more than 90% of it is healthy material that has been trimmed for the benefit of the plant or for aesthetic purposes as part of our good cultural practices. These plants will have been fed as per our Nutrient Application Practices, and this material will be very high in plant nutrient value. To request a free PDF copy of our Nutrient Application Practices that explains with what and when we feed our indoor tropical plants, send an e-mail to plantsforall@ody.ca

At our facility in Guelph, the property owner will not allow compost piles. An option was to bag the compost for weekly pick up as part of our collection by the municipal garbage and recycling collectors. However, that was not an option that I could be happy with because our municipality trucks the compostable material out of the area to be incinerated.

What do we do with our compostable material? We bag it and after we've accumulated a vanload we move it up to my sister's farm near Kenilworth, about 45 minutes north of Guelph. Here she and her husband further compost the material and/or mix it with other ingredients to develop their own 'secret' feed formula for growing giant pumpkins. Growing giant pumpkins is a hobby for them; but big business for others.  There is a well-established social network amongst giant pumpkin growers that contributes to the development of better seeds for better crops and better cultural practices.

Their objective is not to grow the biggest pumpkin in the world; but rather, to grow the biggest pumpkin that they can and to keep improving year after year. We were up to the farm this past weekend to drop off some more compostable material and to see how this year has been for production. We were excited to learn that their entry this year won them third-place, out of 18 entries, at the Rockton World's Fair, on October 9, 2010. Furthermore, this year's entry was their largest pumpkin ever, weighing in at 740 pounds. Congratulations! Pictured here is a little sister of the winning pumpkin with my sister standing beside it for size relativity. The pumpkin pictured would weigh in at approximately 720 pounds. The variety of pumpkins they grow is Atlantic Giants. Left click on the picture to enlarge it.

 What do you do with your compostable material? Send me a comment and we'll share your good ideas.

Brian

Plants For All