Thursday 6 June 2013

Recycling – Part One

Recycle – Verb     

  • Convert (waste) into reusable material.
  •  Return (material) to a previous stage in a cyclic process.
Like most people these days we try and recycle what we can at home by putting our garden & kitchen waste in the green bin and bottles & cans and paper in the blue boxes provided by the council. We also recycle plastic and cardboard and other things like clothes & books where possible by taking them to the refuse centre or to the collection boxes that you see at the various supermarkets and other places.

So I was very surprised to find out the amount and variety of recycling that goes on at Ford Park.


Much of the garden waste and some cardboard and paper is put to good use making compost, and they have three large areas for the main compost. 

The first area is the general garden waste with smaller amounts of cardboard & paper. 

 The second area is made up of older compost that is slowly rotting down and you can still see the bigger stems & twigs which take longer to rot down. 

The third area is where the leaves are put to produce a Leaf Mould Compost.

Eventually it is hoped that a 3 tier rolling system will be achieved so area 1 will be ready to use compost, area 2 will have compost rotting down and area 3 will have any new garden waste added to it ready to start rotting down.  

As well as these areas there is also a wormery and a compost tumbler & what looks to my uneducated eye like a "pile of grass".
 







A compost tumbler is a kind of large drum that can be filled with garden & kitchen waste. The barrel or drum as its name suggests can then be tumbled or rotated in order to break up and mix the materials and also aerate the compost.




 A wormery – sometimes known as a worm composter – is an organic method of breaking down suitable kitchen and garden waste. The worms will breakdown the waste to produce compost and it will also produce a nutritious and concentrated liquid fertiliser. As you can see in the photo if the wormery is raised from the floor and a container is placed in a suitable position to collect the liquid this can then be used as an additional feed.

I did wonder about the "pile of grass" and Simon the gardener explained that they had removed this "turf" from the bases of a number of trees in order to put down mulch and to protect the trees from the commercial lawn cutters getting too near and damaging the trees.  They then leave this turf to break down and eventually it will produce loam which is a soil based compost.




Very little goes to waste as you can imagine and you can see in the garden how useful the compost is in helping to enrich the soil that the plants are growing in.

Watch this space for Recycling Part Two to find out what other materials are recycled.
 

1 comment:

  1. We were very impressed by the recycling programme when we visited on June 6th. The use of twigs as stakes in the vegetable garden gave us the idea to use them in our own garden. Using the produce to supply the cafe is super and visitors can be confident that they are eating true home grown products. Well done to everyone involved at Ford Park!

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