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Caution: Dirt Can Be Dirty

The Telegraph is running a story today about how bags of potting compost will have to bear warnings in future that potting plants could cause Legionnaire’s Disease.

Apparently a 67-year old man was admitted to hospital and was discovered to have Legionnaire’s disease. While scratching their heads as to where he might have caught it, doctors discovered that he’d lacerated his finger and then handled potting compost with his bare hands. (The victim in this case went on to make a full recovery.)

“We presumed that this cut was the site of entry of the organism.”

That’s it, then. Must have been the naughty compost. There’s no possibility that someone coughed on him on the bus or something. And now, despite the fact that “the risk of contracting the disease was very low” we all have to be treated like idiots and reminded to wear gloves while handling compost if we have exposed wounds.

Personally, I would put something along the lines of “Caution: Dirt Can Be Dirty!”.

You may remember that the same paper brought us a similar story two years ago, Gardener killed by fungus in his compost.

On that occasion, the gentleman in question “seems to have inhaled a huge amount of these (aspergillus) spores, which penetrated deep into his lungs.”

“From what his partner described, he had been surrounded by a cloud of dust when he opened several bags of compost that he had prepared from his garden to use.”

So he made compost, stored it in the ideal conditions for aspergillus (a decomposer) to flourish and then took a big lungful of spores when he opened the bag.

“Cases of the fungus causing death through inhalation into the lungs are thought to be rare in this country”.

There are lots of nasty things in our environment (both natural and man-made) that are no risk to us when they stay on the outside. When you’re handling compost, or digging around in the dirt, make sure any open wounds are covered. If you have an immune deficiency of any description then wear gloves all the time. And don’t breathe in clouds of things! At the very least you’re going to get fungus gnats up your nose.

Zero Waste Week is coming

My Zero Waste are running National Waste Week 2010 from 6th – 12th September, and the theme this year is ‘Cooking for Victory’. According to WRAP’s “household Food and Drink Waste in the UK” report, we throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink every year. Most of this is avoidable and could have been eaten if we had planned, stored and managed it better. This amount of food waste costs the average family in Britain £50 per month.

Over at My Zero Waste you can pledge to reduce your food waste during National Zero Waste Week, and be in with a chance of winning a prize! Maybe you’ll be identifying repeat leftovers and learning how to use them, focusing on your portion control or starting a new composting system.

Here in Oxfordshire they are gradually rolling out food waste collections, giving each household a caddy to collect food waste, which is then collected and used to produce green electricity. While this is great – it prevents waste from going to landfill, with all the environmental problems that entails – it does nothing to tackle food waste (unless people start to think about what they’re throwing away!) and requires energy to transport it away.

Hence the Master Composters are keen to encourage people to start, or contine, composting as much of their food waste as possible. Unavoidable kitchen waste that is easy to compost includes kitchen paper, plain cardboard packaging, egg shells, tea bags* and coffee grounds and fruit and vegetable peelings. Cooked food, meat, fish and dairy products are more difficult (unless you have a bokashi system) and it’s those things that should be sent off in food waste collections for recycling.

Composting at home is really the most environmentally friendly option – doing so for one year can save enough greenhouse gases to offset all of the times you boil your kettle, or three months of using the washing machine. And you’ll get free fertiliser as well :)

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*sadly it does depend on the tea bags you use to a certain extent.

Shopping for composting advice

Why not pick up some composting advice when you head down to the market to buy your fruit and veg? RecycleNow have launched a partnership with the National Market Traders’ Federation that will roll out across the UK over the next few months, with market traders offering green tips to their customers along with their purchases, to encourage them to compost household waste such as fruit and vegetable peelings, instead of throwing it away.

Tea break?

The Japanese Tea House at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons

I’ve been a tea drinker since before I could walk, I should think. I certainly can’t remember a time before I drank tea. I’m a big fan of the black stuff, and happy to drink the green stuff (and the white stuff), but not so content with herbal and fruit tisanes. I made a start a couple of years ago with lemon balm, but I tend to find them rather lacking in body.

Tea bags are one of the great conveniences of the modern age, which is why I was very disappointed when Nick Palmer left me a comment on my Barriers to Composting post, telling me that there’s an issue with composting tea bags. Apparently they’re no longer completely biodegradable, with a fine mesh of plastic included in the bag for technical reasons. Nick wrote his own blog post on the subject back in March, before I discovered his blog.

I fired off an email to CaféDirect (my current supplier!) in the hope that they would be one of the good guys, with compostable bags. They aren’t. According to their email response, their “tea bags are made of paper and a fine polyester plastic netting, which stops the paper from breaking when a tea bag is infused. The plastic netting is also what allows the heat sealing on the edges of the tea bag, since the fibres melt and stick together to close the tea bag. The paper can be degraded, but not the plastic.”

So, what to do? Well, I have sent an email to Master Composter HQ at Garden Organic, asking them if this is an issue they fancy investigating – their current advice being that tea bags are fine to compost. Clearly they aren’t, unless you’re happy with an invisible plastic residue in your garden. They may have the resources to find out whether this is an industry-wide problem – are any tea bags safely compostable?

If you fancy helping out with the investigation then contact your tea bag supplier and ask them what their bags are made from. Let me know their responses via email, or in the comments, and we’ll compile a list.

I have a stockpile of tea bags to work my way through, and will continue to compost them for the moment as it won’t make much difference now I’ve been doing it for years, and I don’t fancy tearing the bags apart to compost the tea and bin the bag. What will I do when I run out of bags? That depends on whether we find out if there are compostable bags on the market. If there are then I will try that brand.

I may also try loose tea – I have scavenged in the kitchen and rediscovered the tea infusers and tea strainer I almost never use. And I may have another bash at growing herbs for tea in the garden. If you’ve got a favourite tea herb, then by all means champion it in the comments!

Recycle Now: Barriers to composting

Not all composting takes up this much space!

According to research done for Recycle Now’s Home Composting Campaign, a lack of space is one of the main reasons people give for not composting garden and household waste.

But is that really a problem, or just a perception? With so many composting options available, anyone with outside space – around 95 per cent of households – should be able to give it a go and divert large volumes of compostable waste from going to landfill and causing environmental problems there.

To demonstrate that time and space needn’t be an issue and to bust other myths about composting, Recycle Now has put together a beginners’ guide:

1. Heap or bin? A compost heap is perhaps one of the most traditional methods for composting. However, compost bins are now widely available and popular as they are simple to purchase, construct and use.

2. What type of bin is for me?
There are compost bins of all shapes and sizes, to suit your gardening needs.

• Small garden? There are many alternative designs of compost bin to suit all garden needs such as beehive designs or bins made out of recycled wood.
• Balcony or porch? A wormery is the ideal solution for someone with little or no garden.
• Lots of space? The opportunities are endless – there are a range of larger bins available from many Local Authorities and most garden centres.
• No outside space? Some councils offer a separate collection for food or garden waste. Why not check with your local council to see if this option is available in your area?

3. Garden design: If you are concerned about how your garden will look when you start composting, build the bin into the design of your garden. Compost bins could be disguised behind a surround made of either brick or timber (or stone if in keeping with your garden), or you can put a trellis in front of your bin and grow climbers over it for a really natural screen.

4. Getting started: Simply add a selection of ‘greens and browns’ to the bin for the perfect mix. ‘Greens’ are quick to rot and provide important nitrogen and moisture – try tea bags, vegetable peelings, old flowers and nettles, or spent bedding plants. ‘Browns’ such as cardboard, fallen leaves, twigs and branches are slower to rot, but provide carbon and fibre to the bin.

5. The end product: After nine months to a year your compost will be mature enough to use. You’ll know it’s ready when the compost has turned into a dark, crumbly soil-like substance. It can be used to enrich borders and plants. If you have little use for compost, consider using a wormery as this will produce less compost but plenty of plant food.

For further information about home composting and how to get started, as well as advice and information to help you along the way, visit www.recyclenow.com/compost or listen to episode 3 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden show. You could also see if you have a local Master Composter group that can help you.

Do your worms need a holiday?

One of my Master Composter pals has shared a link to an article in the Daily Mail about the world’s first worm hotel, which has opened up in South Africa. An enterprising organic nursery owner has set herself up as a ‘wormery’ and will take care of your worm compost bins if you’re going on holiday – feeding them a daily diet of food waste, including fruit peelings and leftover vegetables. All she asks in return is to be able to drain and keep the run-off (no doubt because it’s such a great fertilizer for her nursery).

Do you think it would catch on over here? Lots more people have wormeries these days – how many of them worry about leaving them alone over holidays? I have never been away from home for longer than a fortnight, and my worms (well fed in advance) have always survived that long without me. But they’re in the garage, well protected from getting too hot or too cold, and not about to get drowned by the rain or dried out by too much sun.

If there is a demand for this sort of thing in Oxfordshire, then it’s the kind of job that your local Master Composter would be happy to take on. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think, or send me an email! If you’re in Oxfordshire and in need of a worm sitter or you would like an MC to come to your event then you can get in touch with the Oxfordshire Master Composters directly.

Contaminated Manure

Last summer, gardeners all over the country were affected by contaminated manure that contained a herbicide that damaged plants. The advice given at the time was to let any contaminated manure rot down further, and that the herbicide would break down over time. Experiences this year suggest that this is not the case. A couple of days ago I received the following email on the topic, which I am sharing here in case any readers are affected. There are lots of links to useful information, including what to do if you have a pile of contaminated manure that requires disposal.

“Hello,

I’m sure you must be aware of the problems experienced by allotment holders and gardeners last year due to the use of manure contaminated by a persistent herbicide called aminopyralid.

Information has been collated about this problem from the links on this page.

Just to update on the latest re aminopyralid contamination in case you would like to provide updates on your website or newsletter.

The latest infomation re manure contamination is posted on my website here.

It is particularly important that gardeners be aware of the need for caution when obtaining manure in light of the fact that the government are now considering reinstating the licence that was temporarily suspended last year. As this is a concern to many gardeners you may wish to publicise an a epetition that has been started here. As the petition will close on 23 October we need a new urgent push to up the number of signatures.

I am posting updates as I get them on my blog just on case you want to keep a watching brief.

Sue”

DIY wormery

I went to a Master Composter event at the weekend, and we had a demonstration of a home made wormery – as you can see, it’s made of recycled crates. These crates came from the Orinoco Oxford Scrapstore, but you might be able to find something similar local to you.

In fact, anything stackable can be made into a DIY wormery. The bottom tray needs to have no holes in the bottom, so it collects the worm ‘tea’ that drains out. You can fit a tap if you want too, but you could also just tip the liquid out as and when necessary. The upper trays need to have holes drilled into the bottom so that liquid drains down and the worms can move through the trays.

Depending how snugly your trays fit together, you may need to drill smaller air holes in the sides, so the worms don’t suffocate. A lid prevents too much rainwater from getting in, and the worms from escaping.

The instructions for this recycled crate wormery are downloadable as a PDF file from CAG Oxfordshire.

This is another recycled crate wormery; Robert is using an old wool jumper as a top layer to keep moisture and heat in and the worms happy.

If you don’t fancy making your own wormery then you can buy one – they are quite expensive, but the good ones last years and years (I’ve had mine for at least 5 years and it’s still going strong) so they make a good investment. Wiggly Wigglers have a new design on sale – the Worm Cafe*, and until 31st October they’re selling it at £10 off. Plus the fact that they’re currently giving away a free bar of Divine chocolate with every order over £50…!

*that’s an affiliate link – if you buy something using it, I get a little bit of money. Thank you!

Recycling at Ikea Milton Keynes

On Tuesday Pete and I were invited to Ikea Milton Keynes to see their recycling and rainwater harvesting systems, and to talk about composting. We were taken on the ‘eco tour’ they give to school groups, which wanders round the operational areas that customers don’t normally get to see.

First up was the area where they collect fluorescent tubes from the store, and compact fluorescent (energy saving) lightbulbs from customers and send them for recycling. Energy saving bulbs contain a small amount of mercury, and should be treated as WEEE waste for recycling, not thrown in the bin. The company that recycles the bulbs has discovered that some of the bulbs Ikea collects still work – possibly because customers are clearing out old bulbs they no longer need, or returned a multipack with one malfunctioning bulb – and they are going to fish those out and donate them to social housing.

Next stop on the tour are the water tanks. There’s a huge one for the sprinkler system, and two smaller ones – one for mains drinking water and one that collects rainwater that’s used for flushing the toilets. It is large enough to last for 12 days without rain, and using rainwater in this manner saves energy at the water treatment plant and on pumping the water.

Moving on to the boiler room – in the winter the store is heated with a biomass boiler that runs on wood chips. There are two large hoppers that store the delivered wood chips until they’re needed. This boiler wasn’t in use on Tuesday.

The store is also equipped with a smaller biomass boiler that runs on waste wood. The store produces quite a lot of wood waste (old pallets and broken furniture, I guess), which is chipped and fed into a hopper and used to heat the store’s hot water. This boiler runs all the time, I think, and has an operating efficiency of around 99%, which means only a small amount of ash is produced and sent off to landfill as inert waste.

(The new store that has opened in Dublin has a ground source heat system under the carpark, plus the small waste wood biomass boiler, and future stores are likely to have them too – but these systems are hard to retrofit to older stores.)

The waste wood chipper is upstairs, out at the side of the store where all the recycling and waste disposal takes place.

There’s a recycling bin for almost everything. Plastic wrap and cardboard are both baled up and sold for recycling (although due to the lack of recycling facilities in the UK, a lot of this material will be sent overseas).

Even waste electrical cables are collected for recycling – the copper inside is very valuable and can be reclaimed.

Ikea’s recycling efforts in the UK are such that stores average around 85% recycling rates. Their target (handed down from Ikea International) is 90% – which means that they really want to deal with the food waste from the Ikea restaurant. A couple of stores are trialling composting systems, but not all of them have the space. And there is the problem of what to do with the finished compost, which is still classed as food waste by DEFRA.

The reason behind my meeting was to discuss ideas for giving away waste coffee grounds from Ikea stores to keen composters among their customers – like the Starbucks ‘Grounds for Your Garden‘ scheme, only on a much larger scale. Ikea MK, for example, can easily serve 2000 cups of coffee every day.

The sheer volume of coffee grounds is only one problem to overcome. There are the food waste regulations, and the operational problems – Ikea staff would need to be able to make the coffee grounds available to customers in a clean and efficient way that doesn’t take up their time and impact on their productivity. Packing the grounds back into the original coffee packets would be too slow, although getting customers to pack their own is a possibility.

Ikea’s environmental efforts (at least in store) appear to be genuine and demonstrate what can be done without affecting the bottom line – Ikea are also dedicated to cutting prices and keeping costs down, and they don’t invest in systems that end up costing them money. They are happy to show off their recycling systems, and would be equally happy to hear ideas on how they could recycle more. So if you’ve got any thoughts about their coffee grounds/ food waste issues, or other ways that the stores themselves could hit their impressive recycling target, then do let me know and I will pass them on.

The Master Composter Conference 2009 - PM

You get the best swag at the MC Conference :)

Topping the bill after lunch at the MC Conference 2009 (usually a dead spot on the conference schedule, as everyone is full and sleepy) was Alys Fowler from Gardeners’ World, talking about her adventures in composting. I didn’t know what to expect, but Alys is lovely – bubbly, friendly and very entertaining. She gave us a talk ranging from composting exploits in New York right through to composting dog poo and retrieving edible vegetables that her neighbours added to her compost bin – and eating them. Oh, and rats at Kew.

Alys recommends:

• Not putting anything cheesy in a wormery, it upsets the worms.


• Wrapping food scraps in newspaper or paper bags before you add it to the compost.


• Using a Green Cone composter for food waste and dog poo…


• And planting rhubarb around it.


• Using a shopping basket as a compost riddle/ sieve.

If you’re a Gardeners’ World fan and you remember those gigantic compost bins they had at the Berryfields garden you will be fascinated to know that they got hot enough to cook eggs!

I was thoroughly entertained by the Master Composter who wandered up while Alys was signing books (I got one signed) before her talk (she was also spotted having a bit of a trolley dash in the organic shop) and asked her if she was someone famous!

After the MC Awards and graduation ceremony, my last workshop of the day was on ‘Applications of EM and Other innovations in composting’ and was given by Richard from Wiggly Wigglers. He was never going to have an easy time, as Alys said she wasn’t a big fan of Bokashi and MCs are a thrifty bunch who object to spending money on Bokashi bran, but he held his own – you can hear Richard’s report of the day on the latest edition (193) of the Wiggly Wigglers podcast, 09:40 mins in.

All-in-all it was a wonderful day (and the weather was lovely!) and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Here’s hoping I get to go next year as well :D

The Master Composter Conference 2009 - AM

Just over a week ago I headed up to Garden Organic Ryton with a coachload of Oxfordshire Master Composters, for the composting event of the year – the Master Composter conference.

First on the agenda (after registration, refreshments and some Top Secret Master Composter news I can’t share yet) was Peter Smithers, an entomologist at the University of Plymouth and author of ‘Minibeasts: An identification guide‘. His talk was on ‘The Importance of Insects and Microbes in Compost’, and although Peter is obviously an expert on insects and passionate about his subject, he had to admit that he didn’t know a lot about which species of minibeast live in compost heaps – because no one has ever investigated! So he talked about the types of creature that live in compost (including worms, nematodes, slugs, flies, wood lice, ants, mites and earwigs) and invited us all to join in a ‘Compost Heap Invertebrate Survey‘ to see what was in our heaps, collect specimens and send them in to him. It involves making a temporary extraction funnel, which sounds rather fun, but at the moment I can’t find any details about how the general public can join in, so I will let you know as and when they turn up.

(You can download the instructions in a PDF file now.)

Next up, representatives from Garden Organic and WRAP talked about the impact of the Master Composter scheme. Apparently, each household that composts diverts (on average, I suppose) 150 kg of waste from landfill each year. And each tonne of waste composted saves 150 kg of carbon dioxide emissions, which means that having a compost bin is the equivalent of not using your kettle for a year, in climate-saving terms.

My last session before lunch was a workshop on insect and microbe identification, but it was massively over-subscribed and the tent was stuffy so I snuck out to take some photos of the gardens instead, which were in full bloom and teeming with insect life.

Why won't you die?

When I harvested my oca tubers last year, most of them were too tiddly to even think about eating them, but there were too many for me to plant this year. I left the leftovers to one side, and they duly sprouted. I assumed that at some point they would give up and die, but they didn’t. Increasingly wrinkly and sad looking, they refused to die.

I got fed up with looking at them, and moved them to the compost heap. Big mistake – it has given them a new lease of life. In the warm, damp conditions they have grown a lot of leaves, even though it’s dark. Hopefully the lack of light will finish them off…!

Compost stickers

The Master Composters have sent me half a dozen of these stickers, designed to go on the front of your bin to show you what to put in and what to leave out. I don’t know what to do with 6 of the things, so if you’re in the UK and you’d like one, send me an email.

Kew

Yesterday Pete and I took a trip to Kew Gardens. Our primary reason for going was so that I could visit the special “Social Life of Plants” event at the Jodrell Laboratory. It was an event all about economic botany – useful plants.

James Wong was there, as was Gordon Hillman. I didn’t say hello to them, but I did have a quick chat with the lovely Emma Townshend, who was helping out with the organisation.

One of Gordon’s colleagues persuaded me to try some wild food – Common Sorrel (which is familiar as I have sorrel growing in the garden) and Sea Purslane. The former is very sour; the latter is very salty, as it is a coastal plant.

And Dr. Simon Platten from the University of Kent was showing off the diversity of French Bean seeds – this one is Nun’s Bellybutton. He is researching the diversity of plants in British gardens and allotments.

Afterwards we spent some time wandering around Kew – have a look at some photos of waterfalls, glasshouses, spring bulbs and giant compost heaps.

Mad Composters Tea Party

I spent a couple of hours with the Oxfordshire Master Composters yesterday, at a tea party at the home of Robert – one of the MCs.

Although it was a bit on the chilly side, we had a lovely time looking at the special planters Robert makes so that you can see the root development of plants, at his compost heaps made from old pallets and around his garden in general. Everyone was impressed by Robert’s ingenuity when he explained that he grows peashoots in vermiculite. He uses up old seed, gives them nothing but water, and eats them when they’re a couple of inches tall – roots and all!

(There are some more photos if you’re interested.)

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