The Stone Mountain Community Garden is a Master Gardener site located in the VFW Park in Stone Mountain. It is a collaborative effort between the City of Stone Mountain and DeKalb County Cooperative Extension. The garden was founded in 2009 and has been at the VFW park since 2011. The garden consists of over 50 individual raised garden beds available for rent as a part of a classic community garden structure, as well as plots dedicated to growing food for donation to a local food pantry. These plots are managed by Master Gardeners and other volunteers. The Stone Mountain Community Garden also features an herb garden, a pollinator garden, 2 vertical gardens, and 4 different composting systems.
These composting systems include a keyhole garden, a tumbler, a 3-bin structure, and vermicomposting. I thought highlighting this garden would be a great way to feature composting options.
Columbus Brown is the site leader for Stone Mountain Community Garden. He talked to me about how composting and other gardening tasks serve as tools for education and conservation.
“We have four types of composting here. One of the things we do is teach a lot about water, soil, and nature conservation, so this is a good platform for reaching out to young kids and their parents as well as a lot of seniors that come here to volunteer. We have school groups come out. They’ll come out after school and my goal is always to make sure that when they leave here they feel like they accomplished something and made a contribution. They don’t get the same reward for weeding as they get from planting or harvesting. So we try to integrate these tasks during their visit. They planted a lot of onions around here, and some potatoes. “ Columbus pointed out some of the vegetable beds, “The mustards, turnips, and arugula are getting ready to go to seed. I wanted to show them where seeds come from, so I didn’t want to go ahead and pull them.”
Columbus gave me a tour of the garden and showed me a composting system I’ve only ever seen at the Stone Mountain Community Garden. A keyhole garden is a combination of a raised garden bed and a composting system. It is a circular garden with a chicken wire core that all the compostable material goes into, including coffee grounds, eggshells, and vegetable scraps. There is a “slice” taken out of the circle, for access to the compost core. “The keyhole garden is designed this way so you can walk up into it. You can bring a wheelbarrow up close”, explained Columbus. The idea is that the nutrients from the composting material leach out to feed the garden. The idea for implementing a keyhole garden actually came from a Master Gardener volunteer.
The garden also has a compost tumbler, a classic option for homeowners, where all you have to do is add your materials and turn the handle to mix the compost periodically. The largest form of composting is the 3-bin system, which moves compost into different bins as the material is progressively broken down until the final product is usable organic matter.
The most unique and exciting system, at least to me, is vermicomposting. I spoke with Jackie, a dedicated volunteer who takes care of the worm composting system. The design was Jackie’s idea, and with the help of Master Gardeners and a grant from the Foodwell Alliance, she was able to create an incredible vermicomposting system. This system is made up of 3 different trays stacked on top of each other. Jackie elaborates, “We started with one tray with worms and bedding on the bottom and when this tray fills up, we put another tray on just like this one. The holes are big enough that when we start feeding them on the second tray the worms just migrate up. And hopefully by the time [the top] tray fills up with worm castings, [the bottom] one is depleted of worms.“ Those castings are then ready to be added to the garden.
In a previous blog post, I wrote about the home worm bin system which must be stored inside the home to protect the worms from extreme temperatures. I asked Jackie if the worms in this system survive living outside through the different seasons.
“They do, and this is just my theory; the first year [we had worms] it got really cold that winter and we only had one tray so they had nowhere to go and we lost worms that year. But last year, when it was cold they survived. So I’m thinking, if it got too cold up top maybe they migrated down to the bottom. We have them under the tree and I think that really helps in the summertime. Every time I feed them, I always give them water too. I try to keep the compost moist because their skin is moist and they don’t like to be dry. Cardboard and paper layered on top keep the moisture in and keep some of the flies and other things out of the way too. And also, if you don’t feed them enough in time they can eat the cardboard. I’ve added more cardboard so many times. And they don’t like light so I figured the cardboard would keep it kinda cozy for them.”
Jackie gives them crushed-up eggshells and coffee grounds to help them break down the food in their system since they don’t have teeth. You must do the same in an indoor vermicompost bin, although you can use a bit of dirt from the ground as an alternative in both.
Worms are not the only things attracted to the system, Jackie has noticed roly polys, which don’t seem to bother the worms, as well as ants, “Sometimes ants get in here, I know they can be irritating even to worms. I found out that if you have ants, that means it’s too dry.” Adding moisture to the bin seems to keep them at bay.
Besides the worm castings themselves, the system offers another benefit to the garden. There is a bucket underneath the stack of trays that collects the excess water. “When I water too much and it goes all the way through, it comes down here through this little hole and we gather all the worm juice. And then collect it in a 5-gallon bucket. We have to dilute it, you can’t add it straight to the garden because it may burn the plants.” The “worm juice” is a nutrient-rich liquid byproduct.
I came away from this garden visit feeling inspired. This site used to be a baseball field, so while it is much larger than an average yard at someone’s home, most of these composting techniques can be used in a residential setting and certainly in other community gardens.
The Stone Mountain Community Garden stands as a testament to both environmental stewardship and community engagement. With its diverse array of composting systems, the garden not only nurtures plants but also educates visitors of all ages about sustainable gardening practices. Managed by dedicated volunteers like Columbus and Jackie, it serves as a hub for education and connection. Columbus says what really makes his day is knowing that volunteers can put forth their ideas and make them a reality with the support of their garden community. Both the keyhole garden and vermicompost system are the result of the ingenuity and passion of committed individuals.
If you are interested in visiting, renting a garden plot, or volunteering at the Stone Mountain Community Garden, please contact stonemtngarden@gmail.com.
For more information, visithttps://www.stonemountaincity.org/departments/community_garden.php .
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