Soil Farming at Rose Haven

Let’s get scrappy! Turning our kitchen plant based waste, weeds, lawn clippings and organic matter into rich compost soil is happening!! All of us should be putting our plant-based food scraps into compost, either in green bins supplied by the waste carrier, our own yard or in buckets to drop at Rose Haven’s Soil Farm. If you want to be part of the solution to pollution, and donate your scraps to the process of sequestering carbon, and growing soil, contact Jill here.

We started building compost in mid‑June. After collecting weeds, pond plants and scum, trimmings from Tree of Life and elsewhere, as well as buckets of food scraps from people who took the time to drop them off, turned it all into rich compost soil that is now being used in the Peace and Friendship plantings.

We’re experimenting with grass clippings and sawdust compost and have various methods happening in different areas, but the main project is Hot Composting (layering and cooking) in the soil farm section at Rose Haven Heritage Garden, to the right of the entry from the parking lot. Another method to turn hard dirt into loosened soil is to cover it with mulch. The little bugs and microbes show up and get to work to loosen and feed the dirt under the mulch and bring it back to life.

Did you know “…thermophiles were among the first living things on this planet. Estimated at 3.6 billion years old, they are said to be so abundant as to comprise as much as half of all living things on the planet.” The Humanure Handbook calls these thermophilic microbes our “Universal Ancestors”. These little guys show up and work hard to cook the organic material into a rich blend of nutrients that will feed our plants.