Hey neighbors! Here’s a quick announcement below!
The Chimborazo Playground Community Garden is partnering with Natural Organic Compost Enterprises (NOPE) to upscale our composting! We are inviting neighbors to bring their compostable refuse to our drop-off can be located within our garden (near the corner of 31st Street and E Grace Street). The materials will be picked up every Tuesday and transported to a local commercial composting facility, and we will earn “compost credits” to get some of the material back in the form of yummy soil. This will expand what materials can be composted and solve the problems we were having with inappropriate materials put in our bins. We will still have our compost bin on-site; this is an expansion! We would also love donations to help pay for this service. 2021 will be a pilot to see how it goes.

Donations (to help pay for the composting service, can rental, and informational signage yet to be made) can be made online through EnRichmond, at https://enrichmond.org/partners/chimborazo-playground-community-garden/
Find out more about NOPE at https://www.nopeva.com
3 comments
That’s good news…. but railroad ties? Hopefully not with vegetables. Creosote is a carcinogen. Leaching and uptake by the plants is a known risk especially for children (see EPA guidelines).
Does anyone in the neighborhood have a prospering worm bin? I refer to redworms, red wigglers, Eisinia fetida. This is a way that certain kinds of compost can be processed — by the worms — into fertilizer. I am trying to get a worm bin started and would like to communicate with someone local who has been at least partly successful in such an endeavor.
Hi Josh! I had a thriving worm bin years ago and would be happy to share my experience if you have not found other resources yet. I am not sure that you will even see this comment given the amount of time that passed. You can email me at wormbin34@gmail.com.