On October 25th, 2024, ILSR participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Composting Education Hub (CEH) at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Montgomery County, Maryland. The CEH is the first county site dedicated to training both residents and farmers about food scrap composting, and demonstrating how to recycle nutrients to create high-quality compost for local use. It provides a venue for hands-on training and technical assistance to local gardeners, farmers, and farm service providers to support existing composting initiatives and spur new ones. ILSR contributed materials for a new rodent-resistant 3-bin composting system, as well as composting tools, technical assistance, and training resources to the creation of the CEH.
ILSR’s Brenda Platt gave remarks alongside County Executive Marc Elrich, Mike Scheffel, Director of the Montgomery County Office of Agriculture (OAG), and Susan Eisendrath of the Montgomery County Master Gardeners volunteers. Thomas Fazio from ECO City Farms and Natalia Salazar from OAG also provided a tour of the composting system and its solar-powered aeration system. Dozens of stakeholders attended, representing various county departments and organizations, including: the Office of Food Systems Resilience; University of Maryland Extension; Montgomery County Public School; and the Departments of Environmental Protection, Health and Human Services, and Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Montgomery County, one of the most diverse counties in one of the largest metro areas of the country, is possibly the first county in the country to prioritize a diverse and distributed plan for addressing food waste, one that includes community and on-farm composting. The CEH – the culmination of years of working with OAG and Master Gardeners and many other valued partners – aims to contribute to actualizing this plan by spurring a distributed composting network in the county that prominently features farms and gardens. The goal is to establish on-site composting of wasted food where food is grown in order to increase growers’ access to high-quality compost, improve soil quality and carbon sequestration, while reducing reliance on fertilizers, and emissions related to hauling.
The CEH’s 3-bin composting system is based on a design popular throughout the Mid-Atlantic region (Urban Farm Plans’ Compost Knox) but includes a number of enhancements to improve rodent resistance, protect structural integrity, and reduce labor needs:
- The system sits atop a 6-inch deep gravel pad and is lined with hardware cloth, which both prevents animals from burrowing under the system and keeps the system from sinking into the ground when fully loaded.
- Per the Compost Knox design, the 3-bin system was built with pressure treated lumber and lined with paver stones and hardware cloth, but the original design was updated to replace ½-inch hardware cloth with ¼-inch to enhance rodent resistance.
- The system was further adapted to include an active aeration system, made up of three 0.6 horsepower bouncy house blower fans powered by a 400 watt solar system blowing air into a series of PVC pipes. This active aeration facilitates decomposition and reduces the burden of volunteers needing to manually turn the compost.
ILSR is working with County Master Gardeners and University of Maryland Extension (UME) to develop a model Master Composter program that will provide a pool of trained volunteers to manage the CEH and other community or on-farm composting initiatives, while creating a model that can be replicated in counties around the state. Enrollment for this program will begin in 2025. ILSR will also be hosting a composting training for farmers this fall in collaboration with OAG and Thomas Fazio of ECO City Farms to provide technical resources that can support the proliferation of on-farm composting. More information about both programs will be made available here.
Photo from the Montgomery County Government Office of Public Information
Left to Right: Susan Eisendrath (Master Gardeners), Thomas Fazio (ECO City Farms), Brenda Platt (ILSR), Council Member Dawn Luedtke, County Executive Marc Elrich, Council Member Andrew Friedson, Council Member Marilyn Balcombe, and Council Member Laurie-Anne Sayles.