 | Anyone with a yard and trees, sooner or later has to deal with leaves. If you are fortunate enough to have large, older trees like chestnut and maples, and your neighbors have a few as well, chances are your yard will be awash with them, come late autumn.
Don’t just stand there! Go out and get the rake, or better yet, a lawn sweeper to suck up and bag all that goodness for your garden. Your neighbors will bless you, and you’ll have a great start on next year’s mulch and compost.
While manure is highly thought of as an ingredient for compost heaps, what many people don’t realize, is that there are more minerals in leaves. As much as five percent of a sugar maple leaf’s weight is minerals, and even pine needles weigh in at 2.5 percent of magnesium, calcium, nitrogen, and other beneficial elements.
That’s not to say that manure can’t also play an important part in using leaves for composting. Leaves themselves are slow to decompose. Have you ever been on a walk in the woods and scuffed up the ground along a trail? Chances are, you noticed the layer of dead leaves on top, and wet, deteriorating leaves underneath. If you actually dug into the soil, you’ll find that it was a rich humus, the result of many years of falling leaves and natural composting.
But to compost leaves at home, requires some nitrogen to kick-start the decomposition process. That means adding something like manure to your compost bin of leaves. If you don’t have access to “fresh” manure that has been aged, you can try using the “clean” processed kind that comes in bags at the garden center, or you can go for another nitrogen rich additive such as dried blood. The general rule of thumb sets the ratios at four parts of leaf material to one part manure, or a couple of cups of supplement for every wheelbarrow full of leaves.
When building a bin to hold your decomposing leaves, remember that you need access to keep turning the pile, so don’t make it too high or too deep. A slatted wood, rectangular box is ideal, and allows air in around the deposits. Start with a good layer of leaves, then throw in some manure or supplements, and as you add more leaves, feel free to also toss in weeds from the garden, grass clippings, and other organic materials. You can either stick with solely a leaf/manure heap, or you can go all the way to a fully organic compost program that includes your kitchen cast-offs as well. As with any compost heap, remember to keep it moist, but not sodden, to help increase the heat, and foster the breakdown process. To hurry it along, you can cover your bin with plastic or a tarp.
There are two valuable tips for people who want to compost, or otherwise use the abundance of leaves they find around them. First, is that shredded leaves are far easier to work with, and decompose much faster. You can have ready-to-use compost in as little as 2-3 weeks, if you start out with shredded leaves. Plus, the heap is much easier to turn, since the material with be light and easily forked or shoveled.
The other tip, is that if you have too many leaves for your composting needs, consider “saving” them for other things. You can build a simple storage container with the wood-slatted snow fence, or by using stakes and chicken wire. Put your excess leaves in (shredded if possible), and tamp them down. Don’t forget to water them a little as well. Over time, as even as little as over the winter, your leaves will break down into an earthy, light material that is excellent for mulching around plants, not only helping to retain the water in the soil, but also keeping weeds down.
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