I am a member of a community garden in Vancouver - does anyone know of a supplier who has certified organic compost? The members want to buy a compost load early spring to supplement our own compost supply. I have emailed a few places, e.g. Glen Valley Organic farm, transform compost - but would appreciate any leads.
FREE Compost! Every May, Vancouver residents may pick up one cubic metre of compost for free at the Vancouver Landfill. For other sources of compost and sources of mulch, call the Regional Compost Hotline at 604.736.2250. This is from the City of Vancouver Engineering Services website: http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/solidwaste/grownatural/citycompost.htm Larger amounts of soil can be bought cheaply.
FWIW that isnt certified organic compost which is what the original poster asked for. It IS compost but the source for the base materials isn't contaminant free (it is collected from curbside green waste etc) nor organic sourced in nature, as far as I know at least. It is however likely better than nothing if you are looking for compost. :) For a packaged product consider Seasoil. The product is certified organic by OMRI http://www.seasoil.com/
Getting bulk compost that is certified organic would be really difficult no matter where you live. Organic standards (for a farm to be certified organic) make it unlikely that a farm would sell or give away any of its compost. Organic growers use all the compost they produce. I found one organic farm in SW Ontario that would sell top-quality windrow compost that had been fortified with rock dusts and minerals, but the transport cost was huge, and it was double the cost of other bulk compost. The Canadian Compost Council has developed "CQA" standards for the industry, which may allow you to find good quality producers in the area: http://www.compost.org/CQA-En.html
I believe the municipal compost in Vancouver is reasonably good, one large organic farm uses lots of it. They do go thru a secondary composting step before spreading on their fields, but the facility here does a decent job of composting with some testing to make sure the product is good value.
