▪ Winter Composting▪ Or Ditch the Pitchfork this Winter & Call City Compost▪ While Grant's at College▪ Environmental Activism▪ Growth through Part

Strategies for Success

If you're wondering whether you can compost in the winter, the answer is yes! Decomposition naturally slows down in colder temperatures but still continues. The trick is to make sure your compost pile strikes the proper carbon:nitrogen balance to heat up. While we generally recommend a 3:1 ratio with moderate temperatures, we've found that increasing the nitrogen content when the temperature drops can often keep your compost pile warm. You can check out some other cold weather composting tips here.

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City Compost is an option for fair weather composters

Are you a fair weather composter? That's OK too. There are a few local companies that will pick up your food scraps for a nominal fee and provide you with a share of the compost they create from your food scraps. One of them is City Compost, based in Gardner, but also servicing the greater Boston area. City Compost offers a weekly collection service for all food scraps. In addition to fruits, veggies, and coffee grounds, you can also include things like moldy cheese, meat trimmings, and bones that you can't add to your backyard bins. You can use this service to continue composting throughout the winter and receive up to 100% of the finished compost back with a complete nutrient analysis and lead test included as part of their service. Check them out at www.citycompost.com.

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The Composting Work Continues

Grant is now a full time student at Middlebury College in Vermont. He started three weeks ago, after taking off the first semester to work on his business, take Arabic & Photography classes, and travel to Spain & Morocco. While at school, Lauren and Cara are handling the day to day operations of Dirty Boys. Cara is taking time off from her studies at Skidmore College, and when she isn't composting you can find her volunteering at the Lexington Arts & Crafts Society or making pots at MassArt. Lauren is a composting expert, a community gardener, and is pursuing her certification as a Master Gardener. Grant will be back over spring break to help install new compost piles and will be composting full time this summer.

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Time To Speak Out

We are worried about the new administration's promotion of fossil fuels & fracking, its denial of climate science, and its pending cuts to the EPA. While Dirty Boys Composting donates a percent of our earnings to GreenNewton (formerly GreenDecade), we believe it's critical to become more vocal on environmental issues impacting our well-being and the health of the planet. We participated in the Boston Women's March & will be at the March for Science in Boston on Earth Day, April 22nd. If you follow us on Twitter (@DBComposting) or Facebook, you'll notice that we've started speaking out on issues beyond composting. We invite you to follow us and retweet or share posts that resonate with you.

Seeking Business Partners

In addition to providing composting services directly to customers, we are currently exploring partnerships with schools, youth groups,municipalities and businesses like landscaping companies, as a way to grow the practice of backyard composting. If you know of a group that could potentially be a good fit, we'd be grateful if you could help us connect!

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We've got you covered!

This time of year can be difficult for finding leaves as a carbon source for compost piles, but shredded newspaper is a great substitute. Luckily, David Power, a graduate of the deaf/blind program at Perkins, has offered to supply shredded paper to composters as a community service. Please email us if you'd like a bag of David's finely shredded paper dropped off! A special thanks to David for making this all possible.

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We're Literally A Textbook Case!

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Dirty Boys Composting was recently profiled in Landscape Management Magazine. The article addresses how landscapers could benefit from offering backyard composting services.
We are now, literally, a textbook case. We're honored that Pearson Education is profiling Dirty Boys Composting in the next edition of Elementary & Intermediate Algebra: Concepts & Applications on increasing composting rates.
Keep your eyes out for a more robust Dirty Boys Composting site. We're redesigning it, adding a blog, as well as some other pretty cool options.

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Please let us know if you have any composting questions, and, of course, if we should add your name to the shredded paper drop off. We are also booking new customer installs for the last week in March. You can email us at: dirtyboyscomposting@gmail.com

Happy Composting!

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