pickupguy07 wrote:I think I just found a source to get all the coffee grounds I want. So that could be my main source of greens.
(can you over-do it with coffee grounds... I am wondering if variety is best)
Leaves... I have out the ying-yang. LOL
Lots of trees in the neighborhood, and it seems I am raking leave from fall to spring. Maybe I should make a leaf bin like I saw someone else suggest, and save them ahead of time. ...
I guess one main item is... if it stinks... add browns.. lol
I made compost for a long time without any access to leaves. I used shredded newspaper and regular paper instead. So I know that it works! My greens were the usual: immature weeds, kitchen wastes.
Now that I know about...ah..."liberating" leaves, I can make more compost than I previously did, but I still incorporate a lot of paper into my bin. Because...
The tree we have is a coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. It takes up the back yard, and it's only 50 years old this year. Redwoods kill their competition; they don't compost. Other trees whose leaves don't "play well with others" are various kinds of walnut, magnolias, sycamores, and acacia. This isn't an exhaustive list, but the ones I personally have run into trouble with or friends have. Nice, helpful trees are fruit trees (apple, pear, etc.), oak, maple, gingko, pecan, almond, and the like. So it depends on *which* trees you have "out the ying-yang"!
Help smoothe along that nice relationship with your coffee-grounds supplier. Send him/her customers whenever possible, purchase what you can, etc. Not all coffee merchants understand that they're helping themselves as well as us, so make the benefits to them very real. (Of course you're helping reduce their solid-waste pick-up bill, but money in the hand, as opposed to money *not leaving the accounts* seems to mean more....)
And, although there are people who will say that there's a "10% rule" about compost, meaning that no more than 10% of the ingredients should be from any one thing, I disagree. If a bounty of X comes into my hands--whether that X be leaves, coffee grounds, or something else--it's going into my bin. Maybe not all at once! Maybe there isn't enough room right now! But it will go in as there's room, without any regard for 10%, 20%, or 50%.
Making compost on a home-gardening scale is not complicated. It can be made into a complicated process, but it doesn't need to be one.
Cynthia