Utete, TZ – Garden shop compost – 15 Feb 2013

Michael from USA and Chris from UK are in the Utete area helping Frank, Yusa and Omari start an organic vegetable garden shop, which will help local families start gardens that will supply vegetables every day for their family. Utete is in south east Tanzania.  Each garden will need 600 Kg of compost, so the shop needs to make a good stock before starting to build the gardens.  To start, the shop needs a supply of chopped up green and older brown leaves and grasses.

Once the materials are chopped they are formed into a pile with effective micro-organisms mixed in to start the decomposing process that will create nutrients.

Starting the compost pile

It takes around 6 to 7 weeks of turning the compost pile every week to make a batch of finished compost.

Turning the compost

Finally the compost is sieved to break it into small pieces and then placed in 50Kg sacks, ready to feed plants with its nutrients in an organic vegetable garden.

Ready to use compost