Composting the Big Apple, pledge if you’re in favor of it

At Harvest Power, we’re big believers in backyard composting. That’s one reason the site Kickstarter.com caught our eye.

We understand the challenges that face city-dwellers when it comes to composting. That’s all the more reason that a project like this could use some support.

It’s called Connecting the City to the Soil. According to Kickstarter:

New York City, on the whole, does not compost. The NYC Department of Sanitation points to density, collection costs, and lack of processing facilities as the stumbling blocks to city-wide municipal composting. As a result, the 29% of NYC waste stream that could be composted goes straight to the landfill. This means that all of the nutrients taken out of the soil will never again return to it.

So what’s the solution, you ask? That’s simple. Two wheels.

Kickstarter uses low-cost cargo bicycles to pick up organic food scraps from small and medium sized restaurants around the city and haul them back to farms for processing as compost and fertilizer.

It’s all about reducing waste and improving soil. Kickstarter is preparing to launch a pilot program to test their methods in August. To do so, though, they need everyone’s help. Pledge to support these efforts and you’ll get something in return.

• $15 – Kickstarter will pick up your compostables (they are limited to certain neighborhoods)
• $25 – Receive a free item from a participating restaurant
• $75 – Tour an urban farm and see the farming and composting plan in action.
• $150 – Visit an upstate composting farm to see the foodcycle at work
• $250 or more – Haul scraps for a day by bike and see what it’s like to connect the city to the soil.

If you’d like to help reach the goal, $6,000 for bicycles and start-up costs, visit the site at www.kickstarter.com. It’s only getting a green light if enough money is raised before Sept. 1. Recently the project also earned some ink in Earth911.com.

What are your thoughts on the project? Will you donate to the cause? Why or why not?

This post is brought to you by Harvest Power. Follow us on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook.

Stormwater and Soil

By Jan Allen

What in the heck does compost have to do with stormwater management?

Over the past few decades silt fences and straw bales have been used for stormwater management, often with marginal results.  Increasingly, natural systems using compost and organic matter are recognized as state of the art effective solutions to slowing down stormwater and retaining soil.  As Waste Age points out, “There is an inexpensive and effective method to remediate many contaminated surface waters, soils, air, streams and reservoirs: compost/technology/bioremediation.” -COMPOST: Better, Faster, Cheaper Cleanups

Overlapping Intersections of Soil, Water, Ecology, and Hydrology

In the last ten years a convergence of professionals with new ideas from different disciplines have resulted in discussions about compost, soil quality, hydrology and ecology.  From farms to fish, roads to riverbeds, overlapping interests include: salmon habitat, reduction in polluted roadway runoff, reduction in chemical use on the land, water conservation, soil permeability, native plantings, non-point source pollution prevention and natural treatment systems.  Terms like constructed wetland, biofiltration swale, living roof, compost filter berm, and filtration sox are showing up in best management practices.

This is great news.  The idea of engineering soils using recycled, chemical-free, locally manufactured, indigenous, carbon-neutral materials is an exciting development.  Significant improvements in retention or infiltration of rainfall can be achieved by using simple soil improvement and landscape systems.  The results speak for themselves.

Soil Study Results

A field trial using compost-amended soil and turfgrass system improved retention from 0.4 inches to 1.2 inches for a 1.7-inch rainfall event vs conventional turf design.

Another field demonstration used vegetated biofiltration “strips” to improve runoff retention to 50% by increasing the native soil depth, and to nearly 100% by increasing the depth and percent of organic matter in the soil.

A study on slopes of 15% and 34% grade demonstrated a 3-inch layer of compost performed better than silt fences and performed as well as hydromulch.  The downgradient water did not have metal salts and in some cases leachable metals were reduced.

This challenges all of us to use soils more effectively through the installation of specifically formulated soils that perform to meet hydrologic standards.  Specifically, this means developing “engineered” soils and soil-based management practices that perform as naturally sustainable systems.  It is not necessary to simply accept marginal or damaged soils as a characteristic of the urban or commercial environment.

I began this story asking, “What in the heck does compost have to do with stormwater management?”  The short answer is we are in a “watershed” moment in the world of hydrology.  We at Harvest hope to aid stormwater management efforts by providing compost and organic-based solutions to a landscape near you.

PHOTO SOURCES
Photo 1: http://www.kccwa.org/action.htm
Photo 2: http://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.net/index.php?do=photos&gId=1
Photo 3: D. Caldwell

Digging Deep: Soil-Plant Relationships

By Jan Allen

The other day I marveled at the number of self help books at a local bookstore.  Volumes of reference books showed me how to neatly dissect my relationships with my spouse, children, parents, food, environment, colleagues, and self, not to mention my dog.

Forget self help; we need soil help.

One of the least understood mechanisms in the soil-plant relationship is that vegetation and its cycle of growth and decay is the essential feedstock for the creation of organic matter.  Organic matter is so important in the soil matrix that it is commonly cited as the source of both nutrients and the microbial population that facilitates nutrient transfer to plants. In this relationship the plant and soil system are interrelated. Plants put 60-80% of their energy back into the soil, about half of it in the form of exudates that feed the soil food web. Microbes and fungi rely on these plant exudates as their basic food source, and the plants rely on the microbes and fungi to make enzymes (which the plants cannot make themselves) to convert nutrients into plant-usable form.  In a functioning soil system, this cycle continuously repeats, where the plant debris is allowed to fall to the soil surface, or where compost is applied to replace the plant debris.

The soil universe is much more complex than the animal world in which we live. Where an animal ecosystem may have two or three trophic levels (e.g., where one species eats another), soil can easily have seven trophic levels (e.g., bacteria, flagellates, amoebae, ciliates, nematodes, mites, and earthworms).  In a typical garden soil there are tens of thousands of different organisms within these various trophic levels. The density and vitality of the microbial population depends on the return of decayed vegetative matter to the soil to replenish organic matter that has been lost or consumed.   As the amount of organic matter decreases, so does permeability, water retention, nutrient retention, and other characteristics of properly functioning soils.

Amazingly there were people writing about this before we were breathing (437 years ago; AD 1573; Thomas Tusser; Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. Seventy-two years ago, a thick volume titled “Soils and Men – Yearbook of Agriculture – 1938” was written.  After reading the summary I was captivated.  This book seemed prophetic.  It talks about viewing organic matter as a fuel in the soil, hydrology and rural-urban economic balances.  It talks about the loss of organic matter and its restoration, and the nature and use of organic amendments.  Is this cool or what?

Self help or soil help, I contend that all of our relationships are rooted in the health of our soil.  Even my dog’s.  She loves to put her muzzle deep into the soil just for fun.

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