Got grass clippings to get rid of? Rotten radishes to remove? Dead daffodils to dump?
In the video above, Pam Bennett of CFAES’s outreach arm, OSU Extension, says don’t waste them: turn them into soil-building, Earth-friendly compost.
Bennett, among other things, coordinates Extension’s statewide Master Gardener Volunteers program and is co-author of 2015’s Garden-pedia: An A-to-Z Guide to Gardening Terms.
The Ohio Compost Operator Education Course, called a “comprehensive program on the science and art” of large-scale compost production, is March 28-29 at CFAES’s research arm, OARDC in Wooster. Of note: Four new professional development grants are being offered to help pay for the cost of attending. Apply for them by March 1.
Two key ways to manage food waste — educating people about it and composting it — seem to work at odds, Marion Renault wrote last week in the Columbus Dispatch, reporting on research by CFAES’s Danyi Qi and Brian Roe.
That is, the researchers found, people will waste more food if they know it will be composted — by, say, the restaurant that served it. But they’ll waste less if they know about such issues as filled-up landfills and the harmful methane dumped food waste puts in the air.
The challenge, Qi said in the story, is to get the two methods — education and composting — working not in conflict but in harmony. Read the story.
Food waste continues to be in the news, and a panel discussion at the Feb. 9-11 Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association annual conference will feature how farmers are fighting it.
Abbe Turner of Kent’s Lucky Penny Farm will share how she cuts food waste via animal feed and composting.
Max Slater of St. Stephen’s Community House in Columbus will discuss using the operation’s EPA Class II composting facility to process spoiled food.
Sabrina Schirtzinger of OSU Extension, CFAES’s outreach arm, will describe the successful gleaning program she helped start in Knox County.
Go to “Farmer-Friendly Approaches to Combating Food Waste,” Session IV, 8:30-10:30 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 11. Complete conference schedule.
A study by CFAES researchers finds that diners waste far less food when they’re schooled on the harm their leftovers can inflict on the environment. But if they know the food is going to be composted instead of dumped in a landfill, the educational benefit disappears.
Up to 95 percent of the garbage tossed, dumped but hopefully not thrown in Ohio Stadium during Ohio State football games is turned into compost or recycled. Which is fantastic. So who does the good, hard, Earth-helping work of all that recycling? WOSU’s Esther Honig says the answer may surprise you. (Also, see who makes the compost in this story.)
The Organic Compost Farm Tour, part of the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series, is this Friday, Aug. 19, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Hirzel Canning Company and Farms in Luckey in northwest Ohio. You’ll visit the farm’s licensed compost facility, which turns crop, grain, livestock and canning waste into soil-improving compost, which is used on the farm or is sold to other farms. You’ll also learn about small grains and how the farm prepares custom, regional and international orders. The fifth-generation farm grows on more than 2,000 acres, some 700 of which are certified organic. Learn more here on p. 13.
“It’s a microbial thing,” CFAES’s Mary Wicks and Fred Michel said about composting and the upcoming Ohio Compost Operator Short Course in their recent article in Ohio’s Country Journal. Related post here.
The 2016 Ohio Compost Operator Short Course, billed as a “comprehensive program on the science and art of composting,” is March 8 and 9 at CFAES’s research arm, OARDC in Wooster. It’s for people who work at or with large-scale composting facilities. Read the story …
Mary Beth Breckenridge, home and garden writer with the Akron Beacon Journal, talked to Tom Price of Delaware, Ohio’s Price Farms Organics about his Buckeye-flavored, Earth-friendly Stadium Scarlet compost.