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PHCF’s Community Composting Team, led by the indefatigable Brian T, received the Green Thumb 2020 Community Composting Award!

Garden members Pamela, Traci, Brian T and Dave (pictured above from left to right) attended the ceremony on October 13th to accept the award.  In 2020 PHCF served 2,366 community members, diverting approximately 17,000 pounds of organic material from the waste stream and providing an immeasurable service to the community. 

Here’s the full story:

When COVID-19 hit NYC in March 2020,  90% of the City compost budget was cut, eliminating curbside brown-bin pickups and an extensive network of programs via GrowNYC which provided food scrap drop-off sites at Green Markets and subway stations. The response from the PHCF Compost Team was immediate.  Only six weeks later they debuted a Community Compost Program, bringing to the neighborhood its composting knowledge and expertise (not to mention extreme enthusiasm). 

It began quietly with a pilot program to collect food scraps from the community at the PHCF garden gate, masked and socially distanced. Instantly popular and soon beyond the Compost Team’s capacity to process, they forged partnerships with two nonprofit organizations, first NatureBased and then BigReuse, to accept most of the scraps collected from the community.  

It took the proverbial village to provide these services. In 2020 Community Compost Team members worked almost 80 shifts and logged well over 200 hours. Community composting also had leadership from garden member Brian T, who saw possibilities where others saw problems, and from PHCF garden coordinator,  Martha E who brainstormed solutions to the many challenges implementing a community composting program presented, and carried more than her share of food scrap buckets!

Another image of the crew!

Join us in the garden for our Autumn Shrub Sale this weekend on October 2nd + 3rd from 12:30 – 5 pm ET both days!

There will be houseplants, flower bulbs, shrubs, and more available. To preview the list of offerings, see the Shrub Sale directory here.

Note: if the link above does not work, copy and paste this link into your browser —

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_C214xKhP53b8QN9J-ABNHtPnEXEAy5IwhqNIp2Cjxw/edit?usp=sharing

For the full details, see the poster below:

The Prospect Heights Community Farm crew welcomed the official changeover from summer to fall with a seed saving workshop. Our master gardener Traci led the group through a two hour session on how to make origami seed packets with the chance for everyone to take home seeds.

Seed saving is an important way to maintain and safeguard seed and heritage varieties, which are important for a robust and diverse ecosystem and food culture. In the last century or so, the world has lost 75% of its edible plant varieties. Seed saving also makes sense economically. Saving seeds is free and seed libraries and exchanges are a great way to offer seeds at a lower price (or free) to folks who need them.

Some featured seeds from the garden’s workshop were Zinnia, Cosmos, Okra, Fennel, and Arugula!

If you’re curious about saving seeds, check out these resources:

• Seed Savers Exchange – How to Save Seeds
• Civil Eats – Gardening is Important but Seed Saving is Crucial
• The Old Farmer’s Almanac – How to Save Vegetable Seeds

Author: Judith Sackoff

PHCF hosted a Compost 101 Workshop on Open Garden Day 2021, an annual event sponsored by GreenThumb.  The workshop covered the basic science of composting and then treated people to a tour of our 4-bin system which takes in about 20,000 pounds of food scraps each year and turns them into compost, aka black gold, the gardener’s best friend.

Author: Judith S.

Prospect Heights Community Farm is now home to two native bee condos courtesy of The Bee Conservancy.  With the help of garden members and their families, we installed the homes in two bee-friendly locations in the garden with plenty of morning sun and ample bee forage. Native bees are different from honeybees. They don’t produce honey or wax, they live solitary lives (no queens here!), don’t sting and are even more efficient pollinators than honeybees.

Come visit the condos and see who has checked in.  We are expecting several varieties of native bees including mason, leafcutter, and carpenter bees.

See the photos from the event and of the bee condos