Experimental compost box
Our neighbourhood Baha'i centre has a garden with a little empty space, so I'm going to try a little compost experiment.
Right now, the main way they get rid of garden waste is to either stash it to the side or burn it. I'm going to try to fill up a little compost box. Lacking the resources or the time to build a full-size wooden crate, I'm going to use one of the styrofoam boxes that's on site, about 1x.4m in size. Will fill it with alternating layers of 2xbrown, 1xgreen, and 1xdirt, then water it nicely. Of course I can't drop by every day, but I can ask the caretakers to water it at least twice a week and I'll turn it when I'm there.
2025-07-16 · 10 months ago · 👍 jmcs, sbr
5 Comments ↓
cool. I’d be a bit worried about styrofoam breaking into the compost as your turn etc, never mind whats leaching out of it when wet and in sun.
You can just use a pile or more contained, a hole in the ground.
☯️ dragfyre [OP] · 2025-07-17 at 09:00:
@sbr yeah, makes a lot of sense, and I agree. I'm mainly doing this as an experiment to learn: a) what works best here; and b) how to help the people I know in my community to learn composting.
like I said, most of the yard waste management that happens consists of either stashing things to the side or burning them. oh, and styrofoam containers are the go-to garden planters here, especially in high-density urban areas. 😅 and of course, it's a tropical climate so I don't know offhand how that changes things compared to what I would do in a more temperate climate. once I'm sure that things work OK, I'll probably agitate a bit more to set aside space for a real pile.
☯️ dragfyre [OP] · 2025-07-17 at 09:39:
so here's a little report on the compost experiment. when I started digging out the box, I suddenly remembered that I'd done this before, because the box was already full of some nice, dark compost. I went ahead anyway and dug out the compost to make more room for a new batch, leaving a tiny bit at the bottom to get things started. I ended up doing a layer of green sandwiched in between two layers of brown, which I covered in dirt. as for the old compost, I spread it onto a part of the garden where some sweet potatoes were growing.
here's a closer look at the stuff that came out of the box, a little blurry though. this has probably been brewing for about six months or more with very little turning apart from the very start.
☯️ dragfyre [OP] · 2025-07-20 at 03:16:
Three days in, I went back and gave the compost a turn and added a new layer of green, brown and dirt to the mix as the caretakers had come in and done some trimming and sweeping. The whole thing was nicely moist--not drenched--and starting to warm up slightly. I don't actually know when I'll be able to come back but even if I don't get the chance it's OK. Like I said, this is mainly for learning and to give the folks I know a chance to see it in action. I've already had at least one good conversation about what I'm doing, which hasn't been easy because my technical language ability for these things isn't great, so conversations tend to be a bit halting.
☯️ dragfyre [OP] · Jan 19 at 03:54:
it's been six months since the start of the compost experiment. I haven't been able to follow up very frequently, but every time I pop in, I see rich-looking dark soil in the box. I also dig some of it out each time and sprinkle it onto the nearby garden space, where sweet potatoes have been growing as ground cover. after that, I forage around for green leafy plants to chop and add to the mix, and then rake up some browns - either dry leaves that have fallen from the well-kept trees around the centre, or from the food forest in the back, where they sit around decomposing.
The two most common methods of dealing with yard waste here are burning and chop-and-drop. The latter is really only used when a forested area is available; most gardens are very small with very little space to build up soil, so chop-and-drop isn't very feasible. When people do compost, they mostly put kitchen waste in a pile and let it rot. And, of course, every neighbourhood has a pile of burnt stuff somewhere, especially in the winter but really any time someone needs to clean things up. I had the misfortune of living on a street where the uncle across from us was downright religious about this, with smoke hanging in the air several days out of the week.
anyway, I digress a bit. it seems like the compost box is becoming an accepted feature around the garden. I've noticed the caretakers taking from and adding to it—not just dumping stuff into it, either, but adding stuff that would be good for the plants. It'll be interesting to see how this affects what comes out of the garden this summer.