By Kacie Lawrence/For The Sentinel
MURRAY – Composting is a great way to enrich the soil in our gardens and give our plants the nutrients they need to grow. It is also a great way to reduce waste and practice sustainability in our homes and communities. All of these are reasons why the Calloway County Extension Service’s Master Gardener program is currently committed to a composting project.
“My daughter challenged me to start a community composting facility.” Donna Bethel, a Master Gardener in Calloway County, said, “My daughter (Barbara) is a real activist and wants to keep the earth clean and viable. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia, which is a very progressive city that recycles and composts.”
Donna took the idea of the challenge to Matt Chadwick, the extension agent of agriculture and natural resources in Calloway County.
“I spoke to Matt about it,” Donna said, “and while he agreed he said it would only be a pilot project on a small scale, since we don’t have the property or paid manpower to sustain it.”
“It was for logistics,” Chadwick explained, “we needed enough scale to make the process work but not too large that the volunteers would get overwhelmed.”
To get the project funded another member of the Master Gardener program, Brenda Hines, a realtor, applied for the National Association of Realtors Sustainability Grant. Getting the grant, which is a part of the Realtor sustainability program to raise awareness and promote sustainable practices as well as corporate social responsibility, wasn’t a sure thing.
“It was very competitive,” said Hines, “less than one percent of grant applicants were awarded funding, but we were rewarded the full $5,000.”
The plan from there is for Master Gardeners to collect all the data from the project over three years and demonstrate community interest by tracking its contributors. At the end of the three years, Chadwick will present the data to the City of Murray, Calloway County and Murray State University to see if they would be interested in starting a program for the community.
“We want to demonstrate the viability of the process,” Chadwick said, “this is a viable part of sustainability that can turn literal tons of waste, destined for a landfill, into a usable and saleable product.”
Compost is indeed a saleable product. The nearby city of Paducah engages in the process of composting and sells buckets of premium compost for $20 each (wood chip compost for $5 a bucket). According to the city’s website, their efforts in composting and recycling has reduced the waste stream by more than 23% and saved the city nearly $1.2 million in disposal fees.
For now, the compost project is not open to the public, however for those interested in learning more about composting at home Master Gardeners will host two Thursday Night Talks open to the public on the subject: “Composting 101” on May 15 and “Composting for the Backyard Gardener” on June 19. Both classes are free of charge and begin at 6:30 p.m. and take place at the Calloway County Extension Office Meeting Hall, located at 93 Extension Way, Murray, KY 42071.
For more information about Master Gardeners, Thursday Night Talks or composting, the Master Gardeners will be set up at the upcoming Earth Day celebration at the Doran Arboretum on Saturday, April 26, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., or email questions to calloway.ext@uk.edu.