The Fairmount Organic Recycling Center

An old post but it's still valuable information for Philadelphia residents. Need compost take your buckets, ID and get some compost for your garden. 









Lauren McEwen

If you are a Philadelphia resident and a gardener, then RUN, don't walk to the the Fairmount Organic Recycling Center located at 3850 Ford Road in Fairmount Park.

It may not look like much from the entrance, but you've come to the right place!

The Organic Recycling Center is an amazing resource that many gardeners don't realize they have access to. For residential use, city residents may obtain free compost, mulch, wood chips and herbivore manure. Residents are allowed to take up to 30-gallons of material per trip, and to make up to two trips per week. Giant logs are also available for cutting into firewood at no charge. You must provide your own tools, and a chain saw and splitter are recommended for cutting logs into firewood. For the organic materials, I would suggest bringing gardening gloves, a shovel, and a tarp or plastic sheeting to protect your trunk from any spillage.

Residents that wish to obtain more than the free allotment must purchase the materials. Non-residents, landscapers, garden centers, contractors and soil dealers can also purchase materials, which can be loaded into trucks and trailers with a front end loader by Park Staff. 

The Organic Recycling Center Office is the building in the center.

Upon arrival, residents must stop in the office to provide their driver's license to Recycling Center staff to demonstrate proof of residency. Residents must also complete a daily log-in sheet and waiver form prior to loading materials onto their vehicles. There are a few shovels in the office that you may borrow, but I would suggest bringing your own. 

Today I'm here for mulch.

For those driving cars, you can pull up directly next to the huge piles of organic material to load your containers. Trucks (even non-commercial ones) are not allowed in this area. Folks driving trucks must stay parked by the office and then load their containers onto a provided cart to wheel them over.

I like to bring six 5-gallon containers because I can still lift them when full.

I'm not able to produce enough of my own compost at home to fulfill all of my gardening needs, so the Organic Recycling Center is a resource that I greatly appreciate and use often. Maybe on my next trip I'll see you there!

The Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Center is located at:
3850 Ford Road, Philadelphia, PA 19131
215-685-0108

Hours of Operation:
Monday-Friday 7:30AM-3PM

Saturday Hours:
April 1 - October 31
7:30AM-11:30AM

Extension Hotline for your gardening questions

The Master Gardeners Hotline is open and waiting for you to

extension.psu.edu/hotline information

Any gardening question from soil testing, insect control, the type of plant to buy for your garden, pruning and more. So check us out on our website for more information on the HOTLINE. Each county in Pennsylvania and any State Extension across the country has this type of hotline information for it's gardeners. Take advantage of the expertise of your local EXTENSION Master Gardeners. 

ASK THE MASTER GARDENER

Philadelphia Gardeners' Information Resources

January is the time for seed catalogs coming through your mail box and for planning the coming summer’s campaign in the garden.

To expand your knowledge and keep up to date with the latest thinking and practices in horticulture, take advantage of the fantastic range of free resources available from Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, and similar resources from nearby state universities.

Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences has a big publication program — many publications are free, others are for sale (inexpensively) and many can be downloaded as PDFs. Go to http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/Publications.asp to search for publications and to browse lists.

The Vegetable & Small Fruit Gazette is Penn State's monthly newsletter for commercial vegetable and small fruit growers. Although it is directed at commercial operations it has lots of information useful to gardeners. Send a blank email to gazette-L-subscribe-request@lists.psu.edu to subscribe.

If you have never done it, plan to do a soil test of your yard this spring. Go to http://extension.psu.edu/philadelphia/programs/master-gardener/horticulture-hot-line for information. While you are there, download a copy of the valuable Philadelphia Planting Guide, which has a detailed calendar of planting and seeding times especially tailored to Philadelphia’s climate.

Our neighboring states also have excellent information programs. The News Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station lists its publications at http://njaes.rutgers.edu/pubs/. University of Delaware Cooperative Extension Fact Sheets and Publications are available at http://extension.udel.edu/factsheet/.