• How to combine the little pleasures of gardening with that of vermicomposting, while recovering your bio-waste and feeding your plants in a limited space?

  • To answer this question, Loïc Weinhard imagined a composting vegetable garden.

  • Made in France with sustainable materials, it allows you to combine the little pleasures of gardening with that of vermicomposting, while recovering your bio-waste and feeding your plants in a limited space.

Gardening while sorting your food waste to make compost.

Having the satisfaction of eating your own salad and getting your hands dirty… Simple pleasures that are often impossible for city dwellers.

Lack of space, fear of smells… Having a composter at home is not necessarily very pleasant, nor even aesthetic.

Have more room for a planter, even less.

It was by addressing this issue during the health crisis that an Alsatian, Loïc Weinhard, found how to combine these little pleasures of gardening with that of vermicomposting, while recovering his bio-waste and feeding his plants in a limited space. .

An “all-in-one” has thus emerged: the composting vegetable garden.

"It's not an invention but an innovation", specifies the thirty-year-old, who did not wish to file a patent.

Holder of a license in the management and treatment of waste, his project is based on local manufacturing, made in France.

“It's important to have quality and durable materials, to favor local craftsmen and industries. The boards are cut to size by workers with disabilities at the Esat de Bischwiller.

I work with an Alsatian potter, the cutting, folding and welding are carried out by two companies from Bas-Rhin, and it's me who assembles everything, in my garage in Haguenau”, before marketing them.



A direct exchange between the composter and the planter

The priorities ?

“It should be aesthetic, functional and educational,” he explains.

I tried to reproduce in a single module what we find in the forest, in nature.

“The composter is integrated into the planter and allows, “it is one of the main interests of this innovation, that of making the direct link between the compost and the planter”, image Loïc Weinhard.

“There are exchanges that will take place, the plants will come directly to draw the nutrients that come from the compost.

The plant will very quickly access the moisture from the bio-waste and then the nutrients that will be available.

The two parts are not isolated from each other.

Moreover, during extreme heat or cold, the worms take refuge in the planter and do not die.

»

Made of wood, or even stainless steel for one of the models, several sizes exist.

For people who “really like to garden”, the stainless steel module, the most compact with its sides of 40 cm, is “recommended because it includes ten planting holes, vertically, details Loïc Weinhard.

This allows, when it is well supplied with lettuce plants, herbs, cabbage, to completely dress the composting vegetable garden and you have a real planter on your balcony or terrace.

» Outside, even inside his apartment if one is « not afraid of dirtying the ground while gardening ».

Thanks to these modules, you can maximize the cultivation area.

A gain in space which should even double at the start of 2023, because the young autoentrepreneur has already imagined an extension for the stainless steel model:

“We will thus be able to go from a capacity of 12 liters of compost to 24 litres.

»


For a balanced compost

Other models, in wood, larger, allow different uses, even in a garden.

Easier to manage, they require little maintenance.

Apart from the absence of holes for plantations, the principle remains the same.

Manure worms, earthworms, do most of the work.

They can be provided with the purchase of the composter vegetable garden and it will take a few months for its operation to be fully optimized.

“It will depend on the regularity of the contribution of food waste and the maintenance of the compost.

»



And to improve its balance and avoid any smell, except sometimes a good natural smell of humus, several accessories are available.

Like sawdust, to "sprinkle" and recommended each time bio-waste is deposited.

“This creates different successive layers that will eventually form a well-balanced compost.

For that, you have to add carbon.

It is these different successive layers of nitrogenous materials and carbonaceous materials that will form it.

You can also substitute sawdust with dead leaves,” adds Loïc Weinhard.

The latter also offers oyas, a kind of small closed but microporous earthenware pots which, once buried, help maintain the humidity in the planter.

Or even sticks, to put at the bottom of it.

“They allow, explains Loïc Weinhard, to garden on the principle of permaculture.

They decompose very slowly and fungi will be able to grow on them.

This developing mycelium will thus protect the roots of the plants.

What it takes to become a real expert in composting-gardening.

Planet

Sorting of food waste: "Citizen and necessary act" or "anything", the opinions sharply oppose

Planet

Strasbourg: City dwellers, are you all ready to sort your food waste?

  • Planet

  • Live better in the city

  • Company

  • Garden

  • Feed

  • Ecology

  • Environment

  • Strasbourg

  • Great East