I've Got Leaves!

[stella1751]

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Whether slow composting with little to no turning or hot composting turning at optimal frequency, the best way is the one that works for you. Some folks like making the optimal mixes brewing their teas while others just like to pile it up and let it rot.

My slow bins are in an out of the way place on pavers where the worms crawl up and do the work for me. I start with 4 to 6 inches of dry woody stuff on the bottom and add all sorts of junk over the course of a year. After it's topped, reduced and topped again a few times I just water for around a year. I just applied one of those and it was like shoveling a giant brownie.

My hot bins cook the weeds and the seeds and provides me with compost here and there throughout the year. After the hot ones cool down, I'll seed with worms and by finishing time I usually have more worms than I seeded. The hot bins get turned once a week. About two months from top to finish on those.

The two different types work for me. I don't work them that hard. They fit into the way I do things and the stuff I have on hand.

Make it work for you and not the other way around.

to sense

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Good post, Rot! I am in complete agreement. This summer I began experimenting with what I call mini-composting: Smaller DIY composters I can use just for my kitchen stuff and small garden waste throughout the summer. For a variety of reasons, some bullheadedness, some poor luck, I never completed the experiment. (Next year, by golly, I WILL drill those holes in it, and I WON'T forget to water it!)

What you have described is the way I will be composting next year. I'll have my monstrous piles and my monstrous wire cages, but I'll also be playing with compost on the smaller scale with my DIY bins. No matter how we do it, we are all achieving the same goal: feeding the soil.

BTW, I loved your imagery: "it was like shoveling a giant brownie."

[The Helpful Gardener]

Sorry stella; missed your query the first time...

PAWS stands for Passively Aerated Windrow System. The folks at Middlebury College (home of one of my green heroes Bill McKibben; Bill's who taught me about 350 and just what that means. Talk about importance of composting...) are using Paws to dispose of their cafeteria waste; I believe Paul Sachs fromVT Natural Aghelped them set up (Paul's one of the old guard who started doing this long before it was cool and has taught a lot of folks the importance of composting).

Moo Doo is a fine product that I have used and a fine way to increase biodiversity in your pile; always sweet and finished, something that cannot be said for all bagged products. I have always been happy with Coast of Maine products which just keep getting better. The new wormcastings look great, and my garden started with a lot of their Quoddy Blend; loaded with lobster shells which activates chitinous bacteria that deter many bugs, and the Penobscot Blend with all the mussel shells helps to deter slugs AND adds calcium to the soil! Plus almost all the mixes use salmon compost as a component and you know how much I like fish (good bacterial AND fungal food)...

But this sort of product tends to be regional and I just know the Northeast. Around Philly, Mark the Organic Mechanicis putting out a very nice compost potting mix; designed his own bag to keep aeration and allow CO2 to escape, ensuring that the biology arrives ALIVE at your place.

But search your area to find the guy doing it right. There's a Paul Sachs or a Mark Highland in your neighborhood too. When you find them, tell us about it...

HG

[gixxerific]

A lot of you are talking just leaves in a pile. What about leaves and grass that can't be wrong can it. I had a puny pile yesterday. Today I have a 12' long 5' wide 3-4' tall pile of leaves and grass mostly leaves though. Of course there are sticks and maybe a few pumpkins in there. I would hope this would do just fine. I already took my tiller into and mixed it up real good than watered it deeply. What are the chances of this actually decomposing by spring?

Another thing I use an old Miracle grow dispenser for watering cause it has a nice pattern to it when on the hose. No Miracle grow though just water. I put some molasses in it along with some fish emulsions. Do you see anything wrong this way of applicating. Main problem I foresee is that molasses not breaking down enough to actually get sprayed out. Seemed to work okay though.

[The Helpful Gardener]

Not at all gixx; do it just that way myself all the time. Keep in mind that city water has chlorine which let's face it, is ther to kill the bacteria and fungii we are trying to get, which is why I tend to use my rainbarrels and watering cans, but I know that if I am broadcasting a big area (like doing the lawn with fish) most of the chlorine volatizes pretty quickly in the air and what is left cannot compete with fish and native biology. Not optiaml, but o.k. And sometimes o.k. is good enough...

And of course leaves and grass mixed is fine too, combining carbons and nitrogens is what it is all about. Some of us just like to custom blend a little more; fungal stuff for shrubs, bacterial stuff for flowers and veg. But compost is pretty much good for whoever gets it; they tend to adjust things to their needs themselves anyway. Rot and Soil have the right idea; living things Rot and become Soil. Period. Ashes to ashes is bad carbon management (combustion puts the carbon in an atmospheric form, and we are already about 28 ppm too far there now); dust to dust makes much better sense. So we compost

This Compost by Walt Whitman

HG

[gixxerific]

I hear the talk of fungal and bacterial but I don't fully UNDERSTAND the whole concept yet.

But I have been composting my way all my life, everything all put in together. I do have a pretty big pile. I will have to turn it a bit to get it going or it will never be done by spring. I have it in a section of my garden that I want to use so it better be done.

[stella1751]

Tonight's the night. All around me, homeowners are toting bags of leaves to the curb. I passed some on my way home today, but I made a point of looking the other way, just in case someone saw me staring at them and coveting them, and decided to call in a suspicious person report to the local PD. I will feel more comfortable stealing them under the cover of darkness, which should be in about three hours.

Have I got what it takes to steal leaves on a grand scale? Sure, I've pilfered the odd bag or two, but those were impulse thefts, a matter of seeing, wanting, and taking, the organic gardener version of shoplifting. I've never before contemplated larceny on such a major scale before. I feel like I'm planning a bank heist. I should have made blueprints of the neighborhood. I wonder whether I should black my face?

If you don't hear back from me, hey, it's been fun. I'll probably be sitting in an 8'x10' cell at the Wyoming Women's Correctional Facility, asking my cell mate what she's in for. I'll tell her how it all began, twenty-some years ago, when I bought a spade and my favorite organic gardening book, the one by Shepherd.

Wish me luck

[gixxerific]

I'm not sure that kind of talk is allowed on here..........

I think about you and the others every day. Where I have been working is the more rich part of metro St. Louis. They have leaf pick up by the city today. More than half of the houses had HUGE piles of leaves out by the street today to be sucked up. They might be 60+ ft long and 4-5 feet high. There is dump truck after dump after dump truck truck loads of leaves around that area.

Have you thought about asking them? I'm sure they wouldn't mind. One man's trash is another man's gold, golden leaf that is.



.....at least no by me

[applestar]

GOOD LUCK, STELLA!

Apparently, my township (or county) still has one of those leaf vac trucks. People are piling their leaves in the street. I'm guessing the vac truck is coming soon. This makes leaf taking a bit more difficult. I made off with 4 wheelbarrow-fulls of my neighbor's pile. Also raked up 3 wheelbarrow-fulls from my own front yard. I have to catch my other neighbor before she dumps her decorative Jack-o-lantern bag full of leaves in the street (Last year, I missed my chance and saw her son dumping the leaves out just before the vac truck came).

[stella1751]

I made off with 4 wheelbarrow-fulls of my neighbor's pile.

Applestar, this one sentence made me laugh so hard my dogs came running, worried that I had finally snapped. I just got this visual of you racing up the street with a wheelbarrow full of leaves, casting anxious glances over your shoulder

Gix wrote

I think about you and the others every day. Where I have been working is the more rich part of metro St. Louis. They have leaf pick up by the city today. More than half of the houses had HUGE piles of leaves out by the street today to be sucked up. They might be 60+ ft long and 4-5 feet high. There is dump truck after dump after dump truck truck loads of leaves around that area.

Have you thought about asking them? I'm sure they wouldn't mind.

Gix, we've got a leaf sucker up here; sometimes we call it the wind or, if we're feeling poetic, Mariah. Most of the time, though, we call it a discouraging word while we watch the deer and the antelope blow past, legs flailing. I think most of our leaves wind up in Idaho.

I got twenty bags. What a score! I could have gotten more, but I decided that these 20 plus the five that one neighbor gave me plus the five that my neighbor across the street promised me will be more than enough to get me through until next fall.

Best of all, I only had to go to one place to get 'em! I decided to hit a retirement community near me first. They don't have dogs--I think that's a rule--so I wouldn't have poop in my leaves and I wouldn't have dogs barking about my presence.

You will never believe what I found. They stack all of their bags together. There were three stacks of bagged leaves on the first street I hit. I took two stacks of ten before I decided I had enough.

Here's another benefit of stealing your leaves from a retirement community: Hearing problems. I don't think anyone heard me come or leave, honest. I kept waiting for someone to come to the window and peek out, and no one ever did.

I wish I'd thought to do this before. All summer long, friends have been bringing me grass clippings, and I haven't had any brown to layer them with. I just stacked the grass clippings, waiting for fall.

Next summer will be different

[Ermintrude]

Do leaves do well in one of the black plastic compost bins? Not clear if you have them over there. Bit ugly but they do the job and keep things from blowing about the place. Tend to keep too much moisture in.

Loads of leaves around here. As soon as it stops raining I will be out filling up my bin.

We have green bins collected weekly for biowaste so most people will put their leaves in there, so no chance of picking up extra.

[applestar]

Stella, glad to add hilarity to you and your dogs' day.

Ermintrude, I'm sure plastic compost bins will serve just as well, just be sure to add/maintain sufficient moisture to begin with since lidded bins usually don't collect enough rainwater.

[Ermintrude]

I don't seem to have the problem with the plastic bins being too dry they seem to keep the moisture in and things end up a bit slimey.

[SkyKero]

I found myself thinking about leaves all day yesterday -- the pick up is on Monday -- I missed out on some bags I passed on sunday on my way to dinner! ARGH...

We have a street sweeper -- but I beat its coming -- I swept the street in front of my house and 3 of the neighbors. But none came out to say anything -- however ... there was some grass clipping in my neighbors driveway --- I didn't go for those -- he was home and had company... I wonder if they are still there..the clippings.. not the company.

I came out with 3 bag fulls --- now to get that bin built....

I am becoming an addict.

Silvia

[gixxerific]

I don't seem to have the problem with the plastic bins being too dry they seem to keep the moisture in and things end up a bit slimey.

The slime may be too many greens not enough browns, or possible not enough aeration. The leaves would definitely help if it's all greens.

[LazyGirl]

I am so excited to start a leaf pile! Last year I hoarded a bunch of leaves to mix in with my greens in the regular compost pile because I didn't know that I could start a leaf mold pile.

If I had more space I would be camping out at neighbors' houses ready to pick up leaves. We don't have a leaf pickup on our suburbia street, I guess people's property sizes can't hold enough trees to justify a city-wide leaf vacuum truck.

Anyway, I fully take advantage that most of my neighbors don't compost. They are so happy when I come by to empty their green bins for them. Hee hee...

Stella - I was laughing out loud at your stealth leaf collection tips. If I had the room I would be following your lead. Well done!