Composting with E. Robert Moore gardeners

Since fall/winter of 2015 was so breezy most of the plants in E. Roberts Moore seniors community garden continued to bare fruit into November. Los Amigos de Moore and I began worm composting and collecting food scraps in preparation for putting the garden boxes to rest for the winter. Finally, one day reluctantly, seniors and I uprooted the spent eggplant, pepper and tomato stalks and added them to our compost pile.

For a while we collected food scraps from the seniors at the center.  Seniors collaborated with store owners to collect coffee grinds and durning lunch placed a compost bag near the garbage. I really enjoyed how the seniors were willing to learn and contributed to every venture.

We did not have a compost bin so we placed all food scrapes into three 5 gallon buckets. This actually work out in the groups favor. Since half of the team was reluctant to accept the cold weather we cleaned each box one by one. Every two weeks or so, we buried compost and the time in between we collected more food scraps.

 As you can see in the photos, our most popular food scrap was plantains and coffee grinds.What were, all these Puerto Ricans elders making? If you thought pasteles, you were right. Just in time for the holiday, several seniors prepared pasteles for their family and friends.