The Children's Wood

Idea in a Nutshell

This grant would enable The Children’s Wood to meet the increasing demand for food waste being deposited into our current composting system and allow us to further increase capacity for future demand. This project would enable us to maximise the potential of our current system, to increase output, and supply raised bed holders with compost. We would also use the compost in our community garden, orchard and on the land. There would also be the potential of creating a small income for the charity.

Experience

Here is the experience of our Community Gardener

• Horticultural qualifications and over 20 years experience in the horticulture industry
• Employment in the last 10 years based on an organic approach to horticulture/permaculture, with a focus on building soils, soil health and learning about the soil food web
• Have had working experience with different composting models eg. building hot composting piles, aerobin hot composting, bokashi, worm farms, two-sided cold composting so have observed the benefits & challenges to different systems over the years.
• Worked and volunteered for TCW for 4 years. In the first year I improved the composting system to its current set up today. Previously, there were multiple composting bins/bays on site but were not being managed in batches or sorted for contaminants, so maturing or finished compost was never separated from new materials being added in any of the bins/bays. This made harvesting and getting good compost difficult, smelly and time consuming. There were complaints from dog walkers of their dog finding partially composted food among plantings on the land.