DESIGNER COMPOST

Is your organic garden getting the right kind of compost? Now you can! Now there’s Designer Compost. Several companies around the world are selling specially curated luxury compost. To be clear: compost is animal manure and decomposed plant matter. Wealthy people – it can be assumed – are increasingly willing to pay top dollar for artisanal fertilizer. A few examples:
– Flamingo Estate, a group of farms in Los Angeles, sells 9-pound bags for $75. The company’s chickens and goats eat like celebrities, feasting on leftover organic fruits and vegetables from the farm’s weekly harvest. The animals listen to music, nibble on wild sage and eucalyptus and roam the property freely. Their product sold out after Gwyneth Paltrow put it in her Goop Christmas catalogue.
– The Six Senses Ibiza, a vacation resort in Spain, composts its food waste from its restaurants and uses the material on the hotel’s farm.
– Steven Wynbrandt, a compost farmer based in Los Angeles, uses worm castings, alfalfa hay and hand-harvested seaweed. He also uses a fungally-rich additive he creates himself (* From what? Toe jam?), and cow manure from organic dairy farms. Small bags he calls “compost tea” sell for $27 a pound.
– Land Gardeners in London, England, creates their crap by mixing nitrogen-rich fresh greens and manure with carbon-rich materials like wood and straw. The company also adds clay, as well as a charcoal-like material they source locally. They produce their compost at Althorp Estate, the 500-year-old property where Princess Diana Spencer grew up. The mix includes waste from the Spencer family’s horses and cows, as well as weeds, young wood chips and buckwheat. A small, coffee-size bag goes for £20, or about $25 a pop.
* “You know, you’re eating a tomato grown in Princess Diana’s horses’ crap!”
* Now when you go shopping for artisanal crap, you can literally buy artisanal crap.
* Rich people grow their own vegetables? Who knew?
* When Martha Stewart hears about this, she’s gonna give herself the biggest forehead slap!
* You know the next step is going to be compost sourced from actual celebrity waste.
* Pound for pound, it’s still a better deal than printer ink.