With all the talk of recycling, I can’t understand why homeowners don’t want to go to the bother of recycling their tree leaves and make wonderful rich organic soil.
Every autumn, and spring, I grin and shake my head when I see homeowners with bags of leaves at the curb to be picked and up and sent to a landfill site. Leaves should never go to a dump.
This summer, a friend and I were walking down our cottage road and we stopped to chat with new neighbours who were outside watering some plants. The two sisters had bought the cottage a few years ago and have been busy sprucing it up. Knowing that I am a farmer, they had a few questions for me about soil and what is the best commercial product to buy. One of the sisters said it was difficult making a little vegetable garden because of large trees on the property. The soil, she said, was not meant for a garden and asked what she could do to improve the quality.
My first question was: What do you do with all the leaves that fall off these trees? “We rake and rake, bag them all and pay a guy with a truck to take them to the dump,” was the reply.
I think my answer shocked them. “Oh, no. Why do that? The leaves of one large shade tree can be worth as much as $50 of plant food and humus. Why not compost the leaves and make black gold. Most trees are deep-rooted, they absorb minerals from deep in the soil and a good portion of these minerals go into the leaves.”
Their answers also surprised me. No place to compost even though they have a big wooded lot. Paying someone to take their leaves to a landfill site was their best solution.
At an early age, I learned the value of leaves. All through the 1960s, my father took care of a few spacious grounds in town that had many large trees and pretty flower beds. He would work on the beds making them neat looking all summer and my job was cutting the lawns. At one of the grounds were two stately homes owned by an elderly man who had spent most of his life in India. He was very particular how he wanted things. At the back of his treed grounds was a small square cement floor with two-foot high cement walls, the remains of a small beekeeping shed that had burned down years ago. It made an ideal place for composting leaves, grass clippings and garden waste. Turning this compost over with a fork was quite a task and one I didn’t particularly enjoy.
You don’t need compost bins or a cement pad. Make a compost pile in a corner of your property. It’s important to keep your pile together to allow it to heat up and decompose. And while the pile is “nicely cooking” you can add some of your normal compost pile trimmings to it. Coffee grounds, fruit peels and scraps and grass clipping can be added while you are turning to make your finished compost even better.
Shred the leaves. Whole leaves won’t compost quickly if left alone on the ground – and especially in piles where they can bind together and become a soggy matted mess.
If you don’t have a shredder, a lawn mower will do a great job of shredding leaves into a fine chopped mix. In a half hour or so, you can reduce 25 garbage bags of leaves into a couple wheelbarrow loads of shredded bits. The finer you shred the leaves, the better!
Fresh cut green lawn clippings make an excellent source of nitrogen to add to your leaf composted pile and get it cooking.
I had to frown when one of the sisters asked if they could put their dog poo in the compost pile if they decided to make one.
I stated emphatically NO, NO, NO you can put in cow, sheep, poultry, horse droppings in a compost pile but do NOT add meats or dog and cat poo.
