The Helpful Gardener
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Just kichen scraps is probably not sufficient to do your leaves. Where can we find you some more nitrogen?

Urine would be a good, sterile source of nitrogen (urea), not to mention decent amounts of potassium and phosphate. Start saving and stop flushing (saves on water too :mrgreen: ).

The coffee grounds suggestion is sound and it's not just Starbucks. Lot's of places need to get rid of the grounds.

Grass clippings and leaves are like carrots and peas; they just go together. Save your own, see if there are other folks in the neighborhood that don't use chems who would part with theirs. Good stuff.

Or chuck it. Just purchase from a good source (but I get the complaints about finding a good source, and it ain't easy; they often go about making their own). There are a lot of us here who do think it's worth it and would kill for your leaves. But if they are dissappearing quickly and to so little detritus, and you don't want to do this, then pile them and forget them...

If it doesn't work for you, find what does... :wink:

HG

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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

When I was young I had enough energy to rake all these leaves but not any more. I use the lawn mower in the front yard to blow all the leaves to the street and the city vacuum truck sucks them up.

I use the lawn mower in the back yard to blow all the leaves to the garden. Leaves are probably 95% air after being mulched by the lawn mower the volume gets smaller but still a lot of air. I had a pile of leaves 3 ft deep 20 ft long in the fall, now it is 1 ft deep.

My neighbor brings me all his grass clippings every Saturday. He has a riding mower with a grass catcher. I get about 40 gallons of grass clippings every weekend. I put grass, leaves, some dirt all together in my main composter. The compost goes down about 6" every week but I keep filling it up about 3 ft every week with new organic material. The stuff on the bottom looks like compost in the spring when I get ready to plant the garden. Not much good stuff there just a couple 5 gallon buckets full. I get a couple more buckets of compost about July and 2 more in Sept but that is hardly anything compaired to what I really need.

One year I used the compost too early it turned all the plants in the garden yellow. I had to feed the plants with nitrogen to fix the problem. It seems like too much work for what I get.

rot
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Geez. Leaves without a bunch of sticks. Don't I wish.

Yeah oodles of compost would be cool. I started out to make oodles of compost. Then the time and energy factors kicked in. Now I'm content to digest whatever I can and the resulting compost is gravy.

With that many leaves I'd be looking at just mulching with leaves. Out here in dry country I end up with a lot of avocado leaves. I let them dry out and then when they're all nice and crunchy, I crunch them through a milk crate and use the result for leaf mulch where ever the wind won't come up and blow it all away.

Starbucks tends to leave out the coffee filters in their give-away grounds. You can mulch directly with the grounds - worms dig it - and then, leaf mulch on top of that to mitigate the crusting effect.

Could be a low energy effort and save you from using so much water.

to sense
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The Helpful Gardener
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Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Good thoughts, rot...

Fukuoka-sensei did a little compost for the kitchen garden, but simply returned straw to his grain fields with a little chicken poop. Anything else was too much work; too much effort with too little return.

Seems this is where Gary is; seeing too much effort with too little return. My friend Mike Nadeau, a real organic pioneer, simply fits mulching blades to his lawn tractor and retuirns those leaves right back into the lawn, Think of the mix of chopped leaves and grass as a ready made sheet compost. I think Mike drags a chain loop behind the tractor to help work them in past the crowns.

Perhaps the best method for Gary has yet to be discovered, and while the conversation here is loaded with good information, Gary is likely the best arbiter of what will work for Gary. :wink:

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Ozark Lady
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Location: NW Arkansas, USA zone 7A elevation 1561 feet

I have come to the conclusion that composting is like eating your vegetables....

Those who love them, really love them...
Those who hate them, really hate them...
And then there are those who manage to acquire a taste for them, by sampling again!

rot
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Yes HG good point, what works best is what works for you. Don't bend so much to make compost or whatever scheme your using but bend it to how you live and work. Make it serve you and not the other way around and you'll find it will stick. If the process isn't working, change the process.

I'll mulch leaves into the lawn when grass cycling too.

I will also rake leaves on to the grass before mowing so the mower will munch and mix the leaves and grass clippings for my bin when I don't grass cycle.

I'm just playing the game of getting the mostess organics into the ground the fastest I can with the leastess energy. Otherwise you can just call me lazy.

to sense

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The Helpful Gardener
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I don't think there ever was a lazy man in this world. Every man has some sort of gift, and he prizes that gift beyond all others. He may be a professional billiard-player, or a Paderewski, or a poet--I don't care what it is. But whatever it is, he takes a native delight in exploiting that gift, and you will find it is difficult to beguile him away from it. Well, there are thousands of other interests occupying other men, but those interests don't appeal to the special tastes of the billiard champion or Paderewski. They are set down, therefore, as too lazy to do that or do this--to do, in short what they have no taste or inclination to do. In that sense, then I am phenomenally lazy. But when it comes to writing a book--I am not lazy. My family find it difficult to dig me out of my chair.
Mark Twain- quoted in Sydney Morning Herald, 9/17/1895

rot
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The older I get the smarter that Mark Twain guy gets.

thanks

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