VISTA Gardens hosts community groups for tours, especially children’s field trips and Boy and Girl Scouts working on related badges and ask them to bring compost or leaves to contribute. We provide them with a flyer and share this information with their families, teachers, and scout leaders.
VISTA composts vegetables and fruits but not meat, dairy, eggs, or oil. Popular are orange and banana peelings, apple cores, grape stems, the skin and root from onions, and hard parts of broccoli and asparagus stalks. Also, if the likes of a whole apple happen to spoil before you use it, into the compost it goes!
A neat way to collect compost is to place it in a bag in one's freezer. That keeps smells, leaks, and fruit flies out of the equation. Then, when you are ready to come to the garden, take it out and your compost will still be frozen by the time you get to VISTA Gardens. There is no harm in adding frozen compost to our compost bin.
A good technique is to use a brown paper bag as the container in the freezer, that way the whole thing can go in the pile. Hint: Place the bag into something leak proof for the trip to the garden.
Looking into a geo bin to see compost in the making.
Future gardeners learning about sifting compost.
Exploring the finished compost.
Finally, from waste to "black gold" young gardeners adding compost to nourish plants in a garden.