DYCLE |

During our quarantine period, our DYCLE team recognised that many members of our nutrient cycle community in Pankow .collected a great amount of their kitchen waste at home! It is likely that since many had to stay home, they’ve developed a greater love for cooking homemade meals. They also harvested this year's Terra Preta soil substrate. We hope that you are very happy with your plant’s growth! Adding our own freshly harvested basil and coriander on the top of our salads....! mmm! This is already a luxurious lunch!

Here we would like to share some good reasons to be part of the composting community in the neighborhood. You may feel more comfortable to start with us.

"harvesting" the humus and sieving out bigger parts

1. Easier to start if we do it together
We often spend hours & hours on internet research when we make new habits. Joining an existing community and learning by doing from others' experiences is often faster.

2. Easy for those who don't have balcony in cities
Many households in the city do not have their own terrace and balcony. But most of us love to grow plants at home! It would be nice to have a place in the neighborhood where we can get fresh, good humus every spring when the planting season begins.

3. Easy to succeed
We love compost worms! They need a cool and humid place to thrive. Some of you may have had the experience of drying out compost boxes, some gave too much kitchen waste one time. Or the worms did not come back in spring after not taking care of the box during winter... Building a bigger compost pile as a “worm's castle" is much easier than a small compost box to keep the best maintenance.

4. Economical than doing alone
If we share the small costs, it will not be expensive. It is not expensive anyway, but some tools are needed.

5. Feeling good
Don’t we all want to be connected to nature somehow? Running a composting community might not sound too special. It allows us to take part in the nutrient cycle of nature. (Green) kitchen waste should not go into the trash bin! Turn it into valuable compost while also enjoying the fascinating process of watching insects and compost worms at work.

6. Enjoy harvesting our own soil!
Who knows where the garden soil at the home improvement store really comes from? Possibly there is peat in it, for which some peatland was destroyed, releasing CO2 and damaging valuable ecosystems. By harvesting your own soil, you know exactly what goes into it and can help protect the environment by avoiding harmful ingredients.

Two key points

1. The community should be in a neighborhood where you can reach easily

2. We recommend Terra Preta - first anaerobic fermentation then worm composting. It is easier to collect kitchen waste without odor at home.

If you don't have such a community, then this might be a good reason to start one!

What is the Nutrient Cycle project in Eden garden in Pankow?

We have started this Terra Preta community in spring 2016 at the Marktschwärmerei (Food Assembly) Berlin-Pankow and in cooperation with EDEN Studio, who own the garden. Marktschwärmerlei is a community platform where members order regional organic vegetables and food through the internet and pick them up once a week, in our case it is Berlin-Pankow every Thursday from 18:30 to 20:00 at EDEN garden.

In this system, members can join our activity for a small donation every year. In 2019, for example more than 1200 liters of kitchen waste were collected and transformed to valuable soil substrate for our plants at home.