Many of the Will County Community Division’s We WILL Grow Community Garden Program (WWGCGP) growers started their community gardens to supply existing food pantries with more fresh, locally grown produce. The majority of these community growers are volunteers running food pantries that recognized the fresh food need in their community and became community gardeners to increase food access. However, most of them did not have significant gardening skills training or prior community gardening experience. The We WILL Growers understood that sustainable and ecologically-based methods improve soil and plant health, reduce waste, increase yields, and organically reduce pest and disease pressures, and that incorporating compost into community gardens is one of the primary ways of achieving these positive outcomes, but starting and maintaining a composting system can be daunting.
To overcome barriers related to composting, The Conservation Foundation and the WWGCGP partnered to develop and provide a composting training program to increase community garden grower confidence and desire to incorporate composting into their community gardens. Our hopes with this partnership were to build the current WWGCGP growers’ composting skills so growers would have the knowledge base to install and maintain a composting system at their respective growing sites, divert food waste from landfills while increasing soil health, and understand the importance and benefits of using an ecological approach in garden design and maintenance, all of which aims to increase community garden yields over time, meaning they can supply their food pantries with an increased bounty of fresh produce.
The 18 participants in the 4-part series brought in kitchen scraps and yard waste, properly known as “inputs,” for the compost pile, which in itself diverted 76 pounds of waste from going to landfills! Their 8 hours of training about starting, maintaining, and troubleshooting community composting systems and the workshops took place at the community gardens of All Nations Church of God and the National Hookup of Black Women Joliet chapter locations in Joliet. All participants were provided a composting manual called “How to Build, Maintain, and Use a Compost System: Secrets and Techniques You Need to Know to Grow the Best Vegetables” by Kelly Smith and were given reading assignments from the book in between training sessions.
Full attendance and participation in all four composting workshops and volunteering two times at one of the community composting pilot locations earned participants a certificate of completion, and are now eligible to receive a composting system for their community garden in 2025 courtesy of WWGCGP. Prioritizing soil health and diverting waste from landfills are critical steps in the health and nourishment of our local communities, and we were honored to empower the gardeners from We WILL Grow to lead these efforts in Will County!
