By Sarah Tobol
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

SOUTH PARK SLOPE – When New York City decided, due to budget cuts, not to collect leaves separate from garbage this year, the community garden “6/15 Green� decided to do something about it.

While leaves are always being composted in the garden, this year, members decided to put the word out to all of Brooklyn – and even the rest of the city – inviting anyone who has leaves to bring them to the garden.

So they set up four composting events: three that took place over the past two weekends, and one that will take place this coming weekend.

Jessica Katz, a garden member, helped organize these events. She is a “master composter,� having taken a course at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. She not only helps to compost the leaves given to 6/15 Green, she also educates visitors about composting.

Composting is “a natural biological system,� said Katz. It is a process of breaking down organic material, not only leaves but also household food scraps. When put in the garden, “it provides an enormous amount of nutrients, it retains moisture, it keeps the beds warm in the winter and cooler in the summer.�

The system 6/15 Green uses to compost leaves is a three-bin system, Katz explained. “This first bin is where the raw leaves and household veggie scraps are put in and mixed with a little bit of old compost material to introduce bacteria and fungus that will help eat through all the material.�

The mixture is moved to the second bin, which “is kind of the bridge period where the biological activity is really starting to pick up.� By the third bin, the “leaves have melted into really dark, rich looking soil,� she said.

“Bacteria metabolize a lot of the nutrients in the leaves and the other material in the soil, and the result of that is heat in the way that your body makes heat,� Katz noted. “So these compost bins can rise up over 120 degrees, even in the middle of the winter. When the bacteria is actually at its peak, you can often find the compost bins even steaming.�

So far, the turnout to compost leaves has been good, Katz said. These composting events provide a much-needed place for Brooklynites who have been used to putting out their leaves to be picked up.

“Everyone that’s come has been so enthusiastic,� she said. Many of them have said to her that they would have felt guilty not putting their leaves to good use and letting them be picked up to just be dumped in a landfill, she added.

Keeping leaves out of landfills isn’t the only way the garden is green. One of its features is a small pond with a waterfall. The pump from this waterfall is powered by solar panels. “One of our garden members is a consultant on solar technology and so we were able to install the solar panels,� Katz said.

The garden is located in a lot that used to be an abandoned gas station. This lot was purchased by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) in 1999 with the help of an anonymous benefactor. TPL purchased 64 gardens that year and divided them into three Land Trust collaboratives: the Manhattan Land Trust, the Bronx Land Trust and the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust.

Members of 6/15 Green are responsible for the funding and the upkeep of the garden, with the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust contributing funds for liability insurance.

The next and last composting event will be this Sunday, Nov. 23 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Six-Fifteen Green is located at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 15th Street in Park Slope.

Can’t Get Enough Green? Visit the GreenBeat Brooklyn blog.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2008 All materials posted on BrooklynEagle.com are protected by United States copyright law. Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues. So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net