Latest compost giveaways in Oxfordshire

Free Food Waste Caddy Liners

Look out for your free food caddy liners in the post! We're providing these to everyone in Oxford to increase the amount of food we recycle! pic.twitter.com/tGRzi9LwG7

— Oxford City Council (@OxfordCity) February 20, 2017

At the Master Composter training day last Saturday, Eiles gave us a heads-up about something that's happening across most of Oxfordshire in the next few weeks. In a bid to increase the amount of food waste that is put out for food waste collections - rather than in the landfill bins - councils are sending free food waste caddy liners to residents.

There's a little bit about it on the OCC food waste website, complete with glaring typo ;)

What the web page doesn't say, but Eiles explained, is that these free food waste caddy liners are going to be non-compostable plastic. There is a reason for this. The food waste collections are sent off to the anaerobic composting plant (which some of us have visited, I believe!), and compostable bags tend to gum up the works and cause problems. Normal plastic bags can be separated from the waste on arrival.

This is despite the fact that the council websites I've looked at this morning (and I haven't looked at them all!) tell you not to put plastic in the food waste bin, and actively encourage us to use compostable caddy bags!

Apparently, paper bags and/or newspaper also cause an issue, in that they take longer to decompose than the food waste, but it's not as much of an issue as the compostable bags.

I'm sure that's as clear as mud now, but the takeaway for us is that the free caddy liners are plastic, and shouldn't be used for waste that's going on the compost heap. In the event that our compost 'customers' ask us about this, Eiles has supplied us with the explanation!

Avoiding food waste at Christmas

Happy holidays everyone! Now that the big day is almost upon us, here's a festive round-up of ways to avoid food waste and turkey fatigue this Christmas! Apparently, Scotland alone is likely to throw away more than 3.5 million mince pies, 240,000 Christmas puddings and the equivalent of over 100,000 turkeys this Christmas - worth a staggering £3 million!

Hubbub have got a nice article on freezing your food bills, which encourages good use of the freezer to store those food items that aren't needed immediately.

BBC Good Food recommend using leftover cooked vegetables to make Boxing Day soup, which should go very nicely with the turkey sandwiches. And FoodCycle Bristol have turned it into a pretty recipe, too:

#CookingWithExcess Don't throw away those #leftover veggies after #Xmas and use them for this hearty #BoxingDay soup 🍲 pic.twitter.com/SVg9H6isPo

— FoodCycle Bristol (@foodcyclebriz) December 14, 2016

Tin & Thyme has a recipe for making your own cranberry sauce, and suggestions on how to freeze and then use any leftover cranberries, stock and nut roast.

We're back to Hubbub for a Moroccan take on leftovers, with a recipe for Turkey cigars.

There's no shortage of inspiration for using Christmas leftovers - the NHS has some (presumably healthy) Christmas leftover recipes, and the Guardian did a 10 of the best round-up a few years ago. There's always potted turkey from the Express, or a collection of equally tempting ideas from BBC Good Food.

My personal go-tos are to turn leftover into a pie, or bird cake for my feathered friends.

Got your own suggestions? Add them in the comments, or start a new thread in the Oxon MCs forum. And don't forget - you can always feed the compost heap!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Oxfordshire Pumpkin Parties

There are lots of pumpkin-related activities at the moment, mainly aimed at getting people to recognise pumpkin innards as food! A pumpkin is for dinner, not just for Halloween.... The Oxford Pumpkin Festival is in full swing, with events that continue into November. This weekend (Sat 29th October) a Halloween special at Talking Shop, Sanford is offering a free fancy dress competition and homemade pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie alongside the usual produce market.

At Donnington Doorstep Family Centre they're putting on a family fun day and cooking up surplus food, and St Clement’s Family Centre are running a Halloween Ceilidh with jigs and reels, chaotic dancing and pumpkin themed baking!

Click through to the Good Food Oxford website for these and the rest of the pumpkin-related activities.

Until Monday you can join in the Great Pumpkin Hunt at Waterperry Gardens, looking for the fruit hidden in our ornamental gardens to win a special, seasonal edible prize! This is a half term activity aimed at children ;)

There's also a lot of online activity aimed at reducing pumpkin food waste this year, with loads of great resources. Hubbub have a page on how to eat your pumpkin and join the #PumpkinRescue, with some video recipes and links to events further afield. They're also reminding us that pumpkin flesh can be frozen, and they're debunking frozen food myths at the same time. So if you don't have time to deal with your pumpkin flesh whilst you're engrossed in carving, pop it in a plastic bag (or reusable container) and let it chill out in the freezer until you do.

Our friends at Cultivate Oxford have some lovely pumpkin recipes, including pumpkin carrot cake and squash pasties, which brings to mind a journey on the Hogwarts Express!

I was sent a somewhat unusual recipe involving a pumpkin and porridge and a slightly less odd one creating healthy-looking brownies, and I have a round-up of other pumpkin recipes at the end of my Halloween blog.

When we're down to the rind, the natural instinct of a Master Composter is to throw the rest into the compost heap, but if you can hold off until November 6th then the OxGrow Pumpkin Day is going to turn them into bird feeders, whilst cooking up a feast, playing games and all their usual hijinks.

I'm sure they'll all be composted, when the birds have finished with them. Happy Halloween everyone!

Pressing apples in Oxfordshire

Enjoying freshly-pressed apple juice at a Master Composter event in 2009!

After a wonderful day at the Garden Organic Volunteers Conference at Ryton, I'm going try and put together some blog posts that I think you might find interesting/useful. For those of you who don't visit the website very often, remember that you can sign up to have new posts delivered to you via email - just pop your address in the box on the right hand side.

At this time of year our thoughts turn to how to deal with abundant apple harvests - many of which seem to be left to rot by owners of unappreciated trees. And apple pressing is a fun event that lots of local groups get involved with. Sometimes free, sometimes for a small free, you can take along your apples (or help deal with someone else's surplus!) and a bottle or two and end up with freshly-pressed juice to drink on the way home.

Sustainable Blewbury are holding their event today (Sunday September 25th), 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm at St Michael’s Church. Check the CAG Oxfordshire event listing for a map. MC Angela Hoy is listed as the contact :)

For those of you for whom that's short notice (or whose apples aren't ready yet...) here are some more forthcoming events:

October 2, 2016 @ 10:30 am – 4:30 pm, Bridge Street Garden Harvest Festival in Banbury

October 8, 2016 @ 10:00 am – 3:00 pm at The Mix, Wantage

October 8 2016, 10am-12 at North Kidlington school,Benmead Road, Kidlington.

October 8 2016, 11am – 4pm, Barracks Lane Harvest Festival

October 9 2016 @ 11:00 am - 4:00 pm at Cogges Farm Apple Day (as part of a larger event, for which there is an entry fee)

And a late one from Abundance Oxford:

November 6 2016, Apple Pressing with Donnington Doorstep SureStart Centre

If you know of apple pressing events you want to add to the list then you can leave a comment on this post or email them to Emma/Eiles for inclusion in the post. And if you have forthcoming events you want to promote then let us know and we'll put those up as well!

And finally... advanced warning if you're likely to find yourself in Tesco this autumn. Between 31st October and 13th November (let's hope that's not a Friday!) Tesco shoppers 'in the region' are going to be asked to vote for one of three shortlisted environmental projects. The winning project will get a £12,000 grant. The second and third place projects will receive £10,000 and £8,000 as part of the £12.5 million Tesco Bags of Help initiative, money raised from the 5p plastic bag levy. Who you vote for is up to you, of course (and I don't know what the other two projects are as yet), but the Earth Trust want the money to improve access to their community woodland, Neptune Wood for young families and the disabled, which sounds like a worth endeavour.

Moyra's wormery update

The Wormery is housed in the greenhouse which resides in permanent shade. The worms do not settle well in the enclosed shed. They seem to want to escape and l don't quite trust them entirely to the open air.

Although it is placed on sand. Perhaps that's what keeps them in.

A few leaves remain on top. All the compost has gone from this layer.

.....and apparently has been transformed into fine textured grainy worm droppings.

I dig both hands gently through it to release the worms....

And separate them in twos and threes- it's easier without gloves and in fact l love the feel of them on my bare hands. They are not slimed in the least.

Close up of casts. No soil or compost remains on close inspection. My worms must have been ready to exodus across the sand.

This too is lovely to sift through with bare hands. There are eggs in here.

Harvested poo into container.

This is all that's left of my enormous leaf pile (photo on Autumn newsletter). I am using some of interior mushy stuff for worm food....

And some of this years compost. Food waste in the form of bokashi waste mixed with soil has been filtered through well cut up compost and grass cuttings. This method of feeding waste food is fester proof. Worms seem to enjoy it.

So leaves in one and raw compost in the other on top of the worms.

Then place the leaves on top of the compost.

.......like so. I realise that what I have done here sort of breaks the rules (waste reduction ethos etc) however l manage tojustify it. One, l am so fearful of killing my charges with noxious gases from rotting food. This way l reason that the rotting is simply done in advance .Two, if l go awayfor any length of time, and l do often, l can leave them unsupervised.

Last thing a proud label needed.

And I am done.

Tools for change

You've donated over 4,500 tools to #ToolsforChange and now, we're extending the deadline: https://t.co/LAIJ3jtJxo pic.twitter.com/EOdBDDaWTO

— WyevaleGardenCentres (@WyevaleGC) June 9, 2016

Now is a good time to clear out the shed, as you can recycle and old hand tools at your local Wyevale garden centre until 9th 20th June. If you want to you can then claim a 10% discount on new hand tools, but that's not compulsory!

This is a good scheme because the donated tools are going to be reconditioned by prison inmates through the Tools Shed HM prisoner workshops, and will then be given free to schools and community groups, in a Starter Pack containing five to seven tools, at a Tool Giveaway Day – dates to be announced – at eight of Wyevale's centres in early 2017. None of those centres are local to Oxfordshire, but school and community groups can apply now if they would like to receive free tools.

Visit the Wyevale website for more details.

Free compost giveaway!

There are two free compost giveaways in Oxfordshire in April, where you can also collect kitchen caddies and liners, and free recycling goodies, as well as buy discounted compost bins!

Our Food Future

The number of mouths we have to feed is increasing, and the way we produce our food will have to change. But how?

What does the future hold for Oxfordshire's food system?

What does the future hold for Oxfordshire's food system, in a warming world? This is the question Good Food Oxford will be exploring in their next event, the third in their Research Kitchen series. The event is free to attend, but you will need to book a ticket - it's being held on Tuesday 15th March from 6pm, at an address on South Parks Road. Visit Good Food Oxford's website for the details and the link to book your ticket.

Mesmerising video of composting worms at work

This mesmerising time-lapse video shows composting worms, Eisenia fetida, working their way through layers of compost and sawdust over 20 days. Photos were taken every 10 minutes and video is played at 24 fps.

You can read more about the making of the video, and worm composting, at Rodale's Organic Life website.

Volunteer success at the Oxfordshire County Council CHOICE Awards

I’m very pleased to report that the Oxfordshire Master Composters got through the first round of the Oxfordshire County Council CHOICE awards. The CHOICE awards (C = customer focus, H = honesty, O = one team, I = innovation, C = commercial, and E = enthusiasm) are to recognise the contribution of council staff.

We won the Environment & Economy directorate award for Enthusiasm! This is great news in terms of recognition for all the hard work our volunteer Master Composters have brought to the scheme. Especially notable is the fact that this is the first time volunteers have been part of these council internal staff awards.

Many thanks to Ailsa Barber and Janet Witcomb attending the ceremony to represent the MCs.

Sow Grow Repeat: Compost on the Guardian gardening podcast

Cardboard tubes and corrugated cardboard adding carbon, and air, to the heap

Oxfordshire Master Composter Emma Cooper has been chatting about compose with Alys Fowler and Jane Perrone on the latest episode of the Guardian gardening podcast.

From the Sow, Grow, Repeat website, you can listen to the show online, download an mp3 or subscribe via iTunes.

Find out what unusual items Alys likes to add to her heap, Emma's top tip for healthy compost, and all about the microbes helping it to rot down.

Extra-large garden waste collection

This looks like a job for Brown Bin!

Getting stuck in to the gardening this month? If you're producing more garden waste than you can compost, then take advantage of the local council's offer this month, and have it collected with your brown bin.

If you're in South Oxfordshire, then you can put out one extra bin's worth of garden waste on your normal collection day between 11 and 15 May 2015. In the Vale of the White Horse, the extra large collection is during the week 18 and 22 May.

In either case, extra waste should be put out in a cardboard box or a clear bag - Biffa can't collect waste in industrial sacks, and they need to be able to tell that the contents is garden waste.

If you're not already a brown bin customer, there will be a special promotional period in June and July when you can save 10% on the price of this annual service. And existing customers can sign up for an extra bin during the promotion period and receive a 10% discount on their new bin for a year.

COMPOST AWARENESS WEEK – 4th to 9th May 2015

a> Dedicated Oxfordshire Master Composters examining a homemade worm compost bin

As part of International Compost Awareness Week, Oxfordshire County Council is encouraging more residents to get composting with a fantastic offer promoted in partnership with getcomposting.com. Residents can purchase discounted compost converters from as little as £17.98 (down from £19.98 last year) and a second compost converter from only £8.99 (RRP £39), a massive saving! (A one-off delivery charge of £5.99 applies.)

More than 30% of the average household waste can be composted, and home composting is a great way to reduce the amount of organic kitchen waste that goes into your household bin. It’s also a cheaper alternative to chargeable garden waste collections and has the added benefit of producing a FREE supply of top quality compost that will not only improve the quality of home grown fruit and vegetables but also increase their yield.

And to get you in the composting mood, we have some top composting tips from Oxfordshire Master Composters:

• I "cook" my compost, to sterilise it and kill off any hardy weed seeds. I stick it in the oven for 10 minutes, or nuke it in the microwave - MC Ailsa Barber.
• My favourite tip is saving up coffee grounds from my cafetiere mixed with water in an old plastic bottle and, when full, poured into the composter – MC Angela Hoy.
• Most people know that leaf mould can take a long time to rot down as do shredded prunings. The process can be speeded up by mixing them both with lawn cuttings which, during the summer can be too much to add to a compost bin. I keep leaves and shreddings in a brick enclosure and then add the grass to the top of the heap and fork it in - you end up with a large heap of a black crumbly mix heaving with worms which is the basis of my tomato trench – MC Colin Fox.
• Remember that compost is much better on the garden than stored in a compost bin, so start using it and make space for the new season’s contributions – MC Lynda Smith.

How worms can reduce our waste

Nearly a third of the world's food ends up in the bin. There is hope, however, in the form of worms, which naturally convert organic waste into fertilizer. In this TedEd video, American Matthew Ross details the steps we can all take to vermicompost at home - and why it makes good business sense to do so.


To find out more about food waste in the UK, and how you can reduce the amount of food you throw away, check out Love Food Hate Waste. And to learn more about worm composting, read Eco Garden: Worm Composting, by Master Composter Emma Cooper.

Love Food Hate Waste game

Oxford Brookes students have produced an interesting video on the art of reducing food waste!

What do you grow in yours?

An abridged version of this article has just appeared in the Oxfordshire Master Composter's newsletter, but you can read the full length version here!

As Master Composters we get the occasional question about what to do with finished compost. Even people without a garden can put it to good use, refreshing the compost in which their houseplants live. Otherwise there’s the option of a little guerrilla gardening, or finding a friend who can use it. ‘Disposing’ of compost is not a problem for keen gardeners - it has so many uses that it's simply not possible to make enough of the stuff. You can use it to feed plants or to improve the soil, as a surface mulch to do both and keep the weeds down at the same time, or as the nutritious bit of a potting mix for container plants.

And so when it comes to compost, we have to do some triage and use our compost where it will do the most good. This year that may well mean improving that waterlogged patch of soil that just won't dry out. Some years it means using it to lighten up the clay soil so that it doesn't crack like a dried up river bed when there's a hosepipe ban. Feeding hungry plants like fruit bushes, squashes and sweetcorn is often a priority.

So what do you grow in yours? The compost from my garden has a slightly more exotic life than most, I suspect. When other gardener's thoughts are turning towards tomatoes, I'm sowing physalis, the golden berries in papery husks that look very posh in the fruit bowl and make tasty pies and jams. One year soon it will be the very spiny litchi tomato (or Morelle de balbis). Harvesting them will be a labour of love, but the plants are hardier than normal tomatoes and might survive the winter outside.

I love spuds, but they're not the only tubers growing in my compost. Andean oca is a regular, throwing up clover-like foliage in discrete clumps, then following on with a harvest of brightly-coloured and slightly lemony tubers after the first frosts hit in the autumn. Yields are not yet impressive - the plant is still adjusting to life in the UK. But that's OK, the potato took a while to get settled in as well.

If it’s something slightly more reliable you’re after then have a look at Chinese artichokes. Related to mint, and with the same rather spreading habit, they’re an easy plant to grow. Like Jerusalem artichokes and horseradish, they’re one to consider growing in a container if you think you might ever want to eradicate them from your plot. Chinese artichokes produce small and strongly ridged tubers that are a beautiful pearlescent white. Some people think they look like fat white grubs you may encounter during a bush tucker trial, but Chinese poets apparently liken them to pale jade pearls, and I like to think of them that way.

My passion for growing unusual plants has been a fascinating journey, and I have met lots of interesting characters along the way. I have interviewed many of them for my latest book, which I am self-publishing as an ebook. Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs is a guidebook of sorts, telling the story of unusual edible plants and the people who choose to grow them. Although we tend to think of our desire for novelty as a modern obsession, in fact people have been moving plants across the world since ancient times, and so I also take a look at the journeys some of our favourites have made from their homeland to our gardens and kitchens.

Where do the alien eyeballs come in? You’ll have to read the book to find out! It’s available to preview at Smashwords, and you can order a copy there in a wide choice of formats (including PDF for those of you without an e-reader). RRP is US$2.99, but Master Composters can save 10% by using the coupon code HB84T.

Britain forgets the art of composting

A recent survey by BusinessWaste suggests that 97% of UK households* don’t compost and that many Britons have never knowingly composted food or garden waste. Even more worrying is their finding that most British households throw compostable waste straight into the bin, even if council collection facilities exist, meaning that thousands of tons of unused food goes directly to landfill or incineration every year.

"We already know that 15 million tons of perfectly good food is wasted every year," BusinessWaste.co.uk spokesperson Mark Hall says, "And a fair proportion of this could easily be composted, either at home or by councils."

According to the survey, many people cite lack of time, lack of gardening skill, or lack of motivation for doing so, but this does mean there's plenty of scope for Master Composters to show people that composting is easy and needn't be time-consuming at all!

There are huge environmental benefits to be gained from home composting, which turns waste products into useable 'fuel' for your garden! BusinessWaste have put together a basic Home Composting FAQ, but if you want some help to get started (or to keep composting) then contact your local council to get in touch with a local Master Composter. If you live in Oxfordshire then contact the Oxfordshire Master Composters - we're happy to help!

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*These results are based a survey of 3015 households.

Free cookery class in Carterton

Oxfordshire Waste Partnership is offering the chance to improve your skills in the kitchen and get tips on how to make your food go further with a free cookery class at Carterton Community Centre on 30^th January. Professional chef Ilja Harvey from Pudding Pie Cookery School will lead the interactive and informal workshop, which would normally cost £50 to attend.

The class is being run as part of the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign to raise awareness of the problem of food waste. Research by the Waste Resources Action Programme (Wrap) shows that each household in the UK wastes around £60 per month by throwing away food which could have been eaten. Councillor David Dodds, Chairman of Oxfordshire Waste Partnership, who are funding the free places, says “there are some really simple ways to save money and eat well, and we hope that this class will be a fun way of showing people that. Food and equipment is provided, and all are welcome to take part, even if you have no cooking experience!”

The session will run from 10am to 12 noon on Thursday 30^th January at Carterton Community Centre, Marigold Square, Shilton Park, Carterton. Spaces are limited, to book a place email owp@cherwell-dc.gov.uk or contact Becky Lake, Communications Officer at Oxfordshire Waste Partnership, on 07967 580023.