West Seattle Blog...

WSB Forum » West Seattle Rants & Raves

(16 posts)

Compost

Started 11 months ago by dpayne
Latest reply from JD

dpayne
Member Profile

Rant: Has anyone purchased compost on Marginal Way at Landscape Materials? I've just spent the better part of a week sifting the rocks,glass,nails and plastic out of the yard I purchased. What Fun !!

Posted 11 months ago #
anonyme
Member Profile

If it was Cedar Grove compost, I'm not surprised. That stuff is horrible. Not only is it full of all the crap you mentioned, the stuff that was delivered to my house was mostly rock-hard clumps the size of footballs. It also contained tons of intact sunflower seed shells - which tells me it probably contained debris from a construction site in additon to not being well cooked enough to be safe.

I've switched to Beauti-Gro from Sawdust Supply. I've had good luck with this product, and the delivery fee is only $15 to West Seattle.

Posted 11 months ago #
stina
Member Profile

I've run into the same problem with Cedar Grove products sold in bulk. Always full of junk. Oddly enough, the stuff in bags seems to be sifted because I don't find junk in it, just wood chips.

I know the WS Tool Library has a compost sifter available to borrow if you want to try to clean out a lot of the junk.

http://localtools.org/library/WSTL/

Posted 11 months ago #
biankat
Member Profile

Ewww. Good to know. I've been eyeballing Cedar Grove Compost for my huge garden beds (10+ yds).

For those who use it, do you think it's a product issue, or a supplier issue? I've seen it at both Burien Bark and E-Green Landscaping. I'm ideally looking for a dark/black mulch product and not bark. Any other suggestions besides the Cedar Grove?

Posted 11 months ago #
dbsea
Member Profile

I'd go with Sawdust Supply. Love that place.

Posted 11 months ago #
anonyme
Member Profile

biankat, it is a product issue. I'm a professional gardener, and frequently order soil products in bulk. The horrid stuff I described above came directly from Cedar Grove. The quality of their bulk products has drastically declined since their contract with the City. And yes, I did take up the issue with customer service and others at CG, but it didn't get me anywhere. They weren't even apologetic. I prefer Sawdust Supply over any of the other companies mentioned, both for product quality and service.

Posted 11 months ago #
pennidogg
Member Profile

If you are looking for a dark/black mulch type product I use SteerCo it is a blend sold both at Sawdust Supply and Burien Bark (I'm not sure about E-Green). As an aside... check out Burien Bark's pricing last year we took a 32-gal trash can over and filled it ourselves with SteerCo for a good price (I think it was a 1/4 yard price, which is cheaper than buying several bags). I didn't need several yards so delivery wasn't an option, we don't own a pickup to haul it ourselves and I always hate buying it in bags since I feel guilty about all the plastic. They also allow you to fill buckets as well.

Posted 11 months ago #
cjboffoli
Member Profile

Well geez. And here I was being so conscientious about removing even the little plastic fruit and vegetable stickers from my peels and rinds before they go in the compost bin.

Posted 11 months ago #
anonyme
Member Profile

cjb: you're doing the right thing, but a lot of people are not. Either the SPU needs to crack down on garbage in yard waste, or Cedar Grove needs to do a better job of screening.

Posted 11 months ago #
biankat
Member Profile

Excellent. Thanks for the suggestions! I've been reading good things about Sawdust Supply so I'll def need to check them out.

Posted 11 months ago #
Cedar Grove
Member Profile

Cedar Grove Composting here. We received this blog alert and are so very sorry to read about any dissatisfaction with our product. We do make a recycled product, and we count on citizens putting the appropriate things in their yard/food waste collection bins so we can minimize the inert levels. We also work very hard to send good, clean material out and we are obsessive about customer satisfaction. We know that we cannot maintain our organics recycling program without satisfied customers taking the product back to their gardens. Please help us by talking to your neighbors about putting only compostable material in their collection bins. With that, if there have been any loads from Cedar Grove you have received this season that you are dissatisfied with, we encourage you to call our service desk at 206-832-3286 and tell us about the problem directly. We stand behind our customer commitments, and if you have not had a positive experience working with us, we would appreciate the opportunity to make it right. We are proud of the years we have served the West Seattle market with our compost, soils and mulches. Your satisfaction and loyalty matter to us, and we want to work with you now and in the future!

Posted 11 months ago #
MrJT
Member Profile

CG - Sounds like the service desk is not handling the issues well. How about a NAME of a someone in your organization to contact.

Typical blah, blah, blah public relations response here.

Posted 11 months ago #
Cedar Grove
Member Profile

Cedar Grove is happy to provide a contact name for you- thanks. You can contact April St. John at the Cedar Grove service desk at 206-832-3286.

Posted 11 months ago #
anonyme
Member Profile

CG, I tried everything you suggested when I received my horrible bulk load - to no avail. There was absolutely no assistance offered at all. The customer service person I spoke to appeared to know very little about compost. I then spoke to a manager, who was no more helpful. I spent weeks breaking up the massive clods and cleaning out the debris. I'd wanted the cleanest possible product for starting new organic vegetable beds, and got pure toxic junk instead.

Doesn't CG get all this recycled material for free? Even if that isn't so, it is an exercise in futility to expect that either the general public or mow 'n blow lawn crews will carefully pick through yard waste to make sure it's free of non-organic debris. CG simply needs to pay better attention to screening and quality. Even good customer service - should it exist - won't make up for a poor product.

Posted 11 months ago #
Cedar Grove
Member Profile

We are sorry to hear that your needs were not met when you called customer service and we'd like to make that right. We appreciate your feedback very much. We also encourage you to review our FAQs about our product http://www.cedar-grove.com/customers/ .

Once again- we are very sorry that it didn't go right the first time around and we hope you'll give us another opportunity.

Please call the number we provided and ask for April St. John. She will take care of you immediately.

Posted 11 months ago #
JD
Member Profile

JEff from West Seattle Landscape and Stone supply here ( aka e-green landscaping ) I'm happy to report that because of the posts on here ( which I let Cedar Grove know about ) feedback from us, and phone calls and feeback from customers, Cedar Grove is working very hard to improve the quality of the
bulk composts and soils. They will be adding an additional screening process to help eliminate more of the debris in it along with larger pieces of wood/yard debris. We're already seeing improvement and are keeping watch to make sure it continues. Thanks for all the comments as the feedbacks what's needed to make sure the product
improves.

Posted 11 months ago #