Should I throw this away?

Hello all -

This will be a short post about waste management in the gardens.

When I started as a gardener at EHCG, I had no previous experience with community gardens. Instead, I had some experience with home gardening, more like landscaping, in which tools and supports and supplies were always bought new. For a novice like me, it seemed that if you wanted something to use in the garden, you ought to drive to a big box store to buy it.

Thankfully, EHCG is able to provide for most gardening necessities internally. This is accomplished in part by good management of old supplies, broken tools, leaves falling in Autumn and shared resources. We really throw very little away. The following graphic summarizes a few of the ways that our garden workers and gardeners re-use or recycle resources, and ultimately what we can produce from these investments.

From that I'd like to segue into a discussion of when, how, and where to dispose of unwanted materials.

Communal items: broken tools, carts, poles

If you are using a tool and it breaks, or find a broken tool, please don't throw it in the dumpster or claim it as your own! Just a few weeks ago I met a gardener who had found a broken communal tool, with a pink handle, which he decided was trash, fixed it, and wanted to keep it as his own. You can imagine that I was very sad to explain that we needed to take it back. We (almost) never throw tools away! If you see something broken, either find a garden worker to give it to, or leave it by the shed. We collect and repair broken tools every year, sometimes multiple times a year. We also repair carts. If you see a broken cart, please don't use it, and bring it to our attention so we can do something about it. The cart beds are really expensive so we want to do our best to take care of them instead of replacing them.

Items you may inherit or find: tomato cages, bricks, wood, structures

If you are a new gardener this year, you may have "inherited" a mess of cages and other structures. Many of these inherited items are perfectly good, and can be used in your plot this year. If you inherit something you don't want, please leave it at the Share Shelf (by the bulletin board at the front of the gardens) instead of putting it in the dumpster. There are many spendthrift, crafty gardeners who may see treasure where you see trash. I myself have never paid for a tomato cage as I have collected plenty left in the trash.

Other things you can donate

If you picked up three packets of lettuce seeds at the Seed Fair but only used 10 seeds and realized you don't need that much lettuce, you can always leave your extra seed packets on the Share Shelf (front of the gardens by the bulletin board). The same goes for plants. Whether you start your tomatoes at home under a light, or buy a flat of transplants at the plant sale or farmer's market, please keep in mind that if you have more transplants than you have plot space, there is another gardener at EHCG who would love to be provided a free plant. Leaving resources on the Share Shelf is a great way to make certain that someone, somewhere will benefit.

Dead plants, weeds

The correct destination for organic materials such as dead plants and weeds is the weed pile, NOT the dumpster and also NOT the path in front of your plot and certainly not your neighbor's plot. Some gardeners choose to let some amount of dead plants or weeds pseudo-"compost" in their own plot. I do this: while hand-weeding small weeds, I place the removed weeds in the paths within my own plot, on top of leaf cover, so that as I walk in my own paths the weed are destroyed but their organic matter is incorporated back into my soil. However, if you have more than a handful of weeds, especially large volumes of dead plants, please do everyone in the gardens a favor and cart them over to the weed pile. These will get turned into mulch the following year to close the loop (of nitrogen, of nutrients, of waste).

Surplus produce

There are some plants that just can't help but yield in excess. If you show me someone who has eaten every single cherry tomato they grew in a season, I will show you either a liar or someone who is not very good at growing cherry tomatoes. Spinach, lettuce, tomatillos, and raspberries behave the same way. The good news is that we have a process in place at EHCG to transport surplus produce to St. Vincent's food pantry to be distributed to those in need. I will write a separate blog post later in the spring to discuss details.

Actual garbage

Once you have turned broken communal items in to the garden workers, donated tomato cages to neighbors, hauled weeds to the weed pile, and dropped off a pound of cucumbers in the donation bins, you may still have real, genuine, honest-to-goodness trash left in your plot. This may include black landscaping plastic inherited from last year; packaging from seeds, plants, structures; the coffee cup you brought to the garden in the morning. If it isn't broken, compostable, or good to eat, take it to the dumpster!


One final word: the way we handle our resources and our trash significantly impacts our neighbors, and future gardeners as well. If you make the effort to incorporate nutrients into your soil in the form of leaf mulch or compost, you will enhance the soil health for yourself and those who come after you. If you litter and cast disposable items around the garden, you make gardening that much less enjoyable for everyone else. If you throw weeds in the dumpster instead of the weed pile, you deprive us of the opportunity to turn trash into treasure. Be mindful of how your choices affect those around you, and you will have happy neighbors and happy plants.