2022 Autumn Adventures in the Green Patch
As the landscape bursts into colour around the streets of Summer Hill, the Junior School’s Green Patch Initiative switches gears to embrace all this autumn season brings. A raining down of the rich red and golden leaves creates the perfect opportunity for the boys to add carbon layers to their emerging compost cake. Between the rainy days of last term, saw the beginning to our recycling program where the boys are bringing dead things back to life and reducing the amount of waste Trinity once sent to landfill.
Our ‘Waste Warriors’ carefully follow the compost cake recipe mounted on the wall, accessing stored piles of rich green nitrogen waste such as the grass clippings from mowing of the’ Chill Zone’ lawn and leftovers from morning fruit break collected in Mrs Bowden’s recycled yoghurt containers. Brown carbon layers follow in the form of coffee grinds from the staff room and the local Envy Café, or dead leaves from the overhead Fig trees, raked up by the class ‘Maintenance Crew’. The heap is enhanced with eggshells the boys are beginning to bring in from home, which they grind down with the mortar and pestle. Please feel free to send in any washed eggshells in zip lock bags to add to our heaps.
Combating the boys’ sensitive noses with the variety of smells the decomposition process produces, has been a tricky situation, but watching the wriggling microbes in action under the microscopes has lifted their resilience levels. Most now jump at the opportunity to be involved with the essential duty of aerating the heaps with the compost corkscrews.
It takes around 2 months for the compost cake to fully decompose. The boys really enjoy adding compost around the dripline of their vegies giving them an organic, nutritional boost and improving the structure of the soil.
Our next composting project is installing Worm Buffets into Stage 1 and Stage 2 Green Patch spaces
Follow the link to watch the creation of our compost club.
Melinda Bargwanna | Specialist Environmental Educator
