We’ve just set up our small-scale community composting initiative at London Road Station, thanks to two donated bins. Brighton & Hove Food Partnership kindly donated a wooden one, and Madeleine brought a large plastic one down from her allotment. The area should be named after Daphne, who had the original idea.

Roberta Emmott from Harvest/B&H Food Partnership and local eco-club leader, Philip Hunton, both came over to the site to advise on composting. A great tip from Philip: start off with a layer of twigs and woody stuff as this will take some time to rot down but will also provide aeration. Roberta provided us with laminated signs for the composting area and a range of useful leaflets on the do’s and don’ts  and several volunteers are going on Harvest’s ‘Successful Composting’ course next week.

We set up the compost bins with layers of green waste from the station garden and stable manure/hay free from a local stables. To this we’re adding kitchen fruit and vegetable waste – at the moment, just from our volunteers as we see how the composting works out. Brighton and Hove Council have said they’ll provide us with plastic kitchen caddies in which we can store the waste before taking it to the compost site.

If things go well, we can look at registering neighbours who don’t have gardens and want to recycle their kitchen fruit and veg waste: if you’re interested, and live near London Road Station, do get in touch with us now at lrsp@hotmail.co.uk. It’s good to hear that the community scheme recently set up in nearby North Laines seems to be working well.

We’ve also cleared the sycamore leaves from the station and bagged them up to make leaf mould. This takes quite a bit of time to rot down. We’re lucky that there’s a small gated area just opposite our edible growing garden where we’ve set up the compost bins and can store bags of leaf mould. After a year or so, it should give a wonderful rich mulch that we can use around the perennial plants in the shady triangle. I have cursed the sycamore trees that cut the light over the shady triangle for most of the summer, but at least they are now providing a useful resource.