I don't have a composter. Wanted one. Dentist came first. But I will have a ton of fall leaves. I hate packing them up for the garbage man when I could have nice crumbly compost for next spring's planting. But how? If I just pile them up somewhere, will they compost themselves by spring? What will I get come spring?
Newbie here. Don't know nuthin'.
Composting fall leaves without composter
Hydrangea,
They will compost by themselves (think about what happens in nature) but probably not by next spring. There are several things you can do to speed this along like making the pile bigger & fatter, turning the pile occassionaly, adding "green" stuff that I will let the experts handle for you. But the bottom line is: leaves turn to compost otherwise we'd be living under the leaves :)
The leaves will decompose by themselves, but it will be faster if they are chopped into pieces instead of piled whole. You can pile them up and run a lawn mower over them, or run the mower over your lawn with the bagger on and empty the bag in a pile... or just pile them up (especially with lawn clippings) and wait. Rain (water) speeds the process up too. Maybe you can experiment in different areas this year. The piles sink down a lot. The worst that will happen is that next spring you will have soggy, moldy, partially decomposed leaves that will make great garden soil additive.
Could I put them in a garbage can and leave that out over the winter? Lid on or off?
I'll be darned if I'm going to throw away perfectly good compost. Especially with my moondust soil.
Running a lawn mower backwards over the leaves mulches them and makes about 10% as much volume....and speeds rotting.
I don't have a lawn mower, though. It's on the list.
Just stash them in a pile. It'll sink down. I rather like the look of a pile of rotting leaves. It's about the only place at my house where weeds aren't growing.
In Raymond P. Poincelot's book "No-dig, No-weed Gardening," he tells how to compost leaves. I'm quoting him word for word on most of this. "A fall leaf pile without any added nitrogen will produce compost sometime late the following summer. You can speed up the process by adding nitrogen, which will give you leaf compost by late spring to early summer." A pile of mostly oak or pine will take longer. He uses blood meal for the nitrogen, a 20 lb. bag for the pile that he describes. He also suggests you can use other high nitrogen materials. He says, "The leaves should be moist; if these are dry, you must wet them down as you make the pile. I like to make my leaf pile a day or so after a rain, because I save a step and don't have to drag out the garden hose." "The best and most effective shape and size for your compost pile is a 7-foot-square base that tapers to a 5-foot-square top. The ideal height is 5 feet. Don't aim for perfection, because approximations will work just as well. If you are using blood meal, sprinkle some on the leaves at 1-foot intervals. I sprinkle about 4 lbs. every foot in height. If you have a lot of leaves, you don't have to make a second pile. You can just make a longer pile, but keep the width and height the same." He says you don't have to add soil or so-called compost starters to the pile.
"Essentially once you make your leaf pile, you have finished your work. Do check the pile once in a while to see that it remains moist, because drying can disrupt the composting process."
Sounds easy doesn't it, I did it one year and it worked well as I remember. Here in S. Texas we don't have that many trees so I'm envious of your trees and the compost you can make with the leaves.
They need contact with the ground to compost right, so if you go with the garbage can, be sure and poke holes all over it, bottom and sides.
I made simular leaf piles as described above for years...only I didn't get all parts wet enough and I did not add nitrogen to the pile but sometimes to the scattered remains. It probably added an inch or two to the garden permenantly which was very desirable.
Same here, Indy -- and I use nearly his exact pile dimensions including making it oblong, not bigger around, when there are a LOT fo leaves.
Now I have a nice hot pile with pieces and parts in very small pieces, but as soon as the trees let loose, I'll start my leaf mold pile because I don't have enough greens and don't want to spend the time chopping leaves into smaller bits and going to 5 Starbucks every week to get grounds.
I was going to suggest lightly watering leaves before mowing to get smaller pieces. The moisture is the key to getting much smaller bits without having to double and triple mow. (I mow and collect the leaves from the lawn, but with the slight bit of extra moisture, some of the pieces are way bitty and have filtered to the soil between the grass blades -- and I need them there!)
Suzy
Lacking a mower, I have a plan. I'll pile the leaves up and then stomp on them. If they're dry enough, that'll crumble them into smaller bits.
Should be fun, too. As long as no one's watching me acting like an idiot. :-)
If you have a weed wacker, you can grind up leaves in a trash can, it works great
Hush, claypa. I want to see an ET segment on the crazed leaf-stomper.
Put some spiders in the leaves, WH will stomp like mad
No, WH will run away screaming like a mad banshee and come back with an exterminator to spray the pile, thus rendering it useless for compost. :-(
Or, I have a pair of scissors....
If you have a lot of leaves, not sure what size pile you are going to have, but its commonly reccommended to make a ring (approx. 3 to 4' in diameter) out of chicken wire (or hardware cloth). And fill that with your leaves. It will keep them from blowing around and is probably a bit more efficient and provides more space than a garbage can.
Shredding the leaves with the lawn mower significantly reduces their volume and speeds up the decomposition process, but its not mandatory....
Adding nitrogen based ingredients, like grass clippings, urine, or coffee grounds can speed up the decomposition process, but its not mandatory....
Adding moisture so the leaves are moist (but not wet) and mixing them up periodically will help speed up the process, but its not mandatory...
I wouldn't get close enough to a spider to cut its legs off, WH.
You could do what I've been doing -- pile everything up, invite the neighborhodd kids to jump around in it, add some grass clippings, 6" of snow, and (next weekend) a metric ton of stable waste. They won't blow away now, by gum!
I have five cats worth of stable waste. Not a metric ton by any means, but they sure are full of poop!
(And I was talking about using the scissors on the leaves! No way am I getting close enough to a spider to do any kind of surgery.)
you REALLY don't want the cat poop in your compost. Nor that of anything that isn't a vegetarian. You think you're having fun with squirrels? Just wait until something bigger finds your compost. Like rats for instance.
Rats are attracted to cat poop? I didn't know that. And I wasn't serious. I was just saying that the closest I come to stable waste is litter pan leavings. And five big cats do produce a lot.
I'll stick to coffee grounds and hope there aren't any caffeine-addicted rodents out there.
And you can just mulch your garden beds with some of those leaves. They will compost in place eventually, but not by next spring.
Karen
once it's moist, if you can cover it in dry weather , that'll help too. I throw a ratty piece of plywood, or those black plastic nursery flats over it. I expect the plastic flats help warm it too.
White_hydrangea: Are you serious that rats are attracted to cat poop???? I had read it could be used to deter chipmonks, but I definitely don't want to create a bigger problem!
I have no idea. That was a surprise to me. I always thought that the obvious smell of a predator would deter small rodents.
happy macomb, greenjay suggested rodents are attracted to cat poop. I don't know if it's true or not, I kind of doubt it. I think a rat would be just as happy eating a half molded tomato or whatever else it might find in a copost bin. I don't grow much in the way of vegetables, and I'm not convinced it matters anyway, but I do compost the cat litter. I scoop it a few times over the course of a week, sometimes it goes in the trash, but since I switched to alfalfa meal instead of the clay, the whole thing gets dumped in the compost pile. I can't tell you how happy it makes me not to carry twenty pounds of clay etc. to the curb-side trash pickup. The cats don't seem to care, it smells better, and it's cheaper. Not to mention the considerable amount of nitrogen involved. I wash my hands anyway.
There's definitely disagreement or controversy on this subject, and I can easily understand not wanting to use carnivore poop in the compost...especially pregnant women, people whose immune systems are compromised somehow, whatever. I hope this doesn't come as a shock to anybody, but some people use their own waste, and live long healthy lives anyway. "To each his or her own"
most domestic carnivores (dogs, cats) are fed commercial foods which do not get completely processed. Apparently the odor of the poop is so much like "food" that it attracts rats and other vermin. If you want to compost dog/cat poop, there are special enzymes that you can apply, and you put it in a compost pit. It takes longer to decompose also.
rats will eat poop. dogs will eat poop too, sometimes, why not rats?. can't say that rats would be more excited about poop than your typical juicy kitchen waste. need an expert opinion on that.
well, claypa, we all certainly now know the possible dangers with herbivore poo as fertilizer, I guess I shouldn't lose sleep over your litter use! personally, horse stuff looks so much like peat moss, it's more 'palatable' to me
Hmmm, a connoisseur, peut-etre? LOL Anyway, I googled around a little, and I guess the enzymes are what's used to start or improve house sceptic systems? Anybody here use this? I bet there's an old thread here somewhere.
At this point, I'm not going to use my compost 'til spring, so I'm not too concerned about it.
Personally, my cats' poop smells like...poop. But rats are a lot less discriminating than we are. They run around in sewers and hang with cockroaches, so maybe they are poop gourmets.
Because of the e. coli scare, I'm looking at my bagged steer manure a little suspiciously.
Ah oui, claypa, j'aime le merdre des chevalles! probably butchered that! ; ) been a while since french 201
And rabbits! those cute little balls! my dad always told a joke about smart pills...
I think your bagged stuff has almost certainly gone thru a good hot composting to kill those bugs. For us casuals, they stress letting the poo go 4-6 months so hopefully the natural ecosystem has taken care of the bad guys.
I'd like to clear up a few things.
A proper managed compost pile is balanced with greens and browns - and everything green is covered with a thick layer or browns.
If you build the pile this way:
1. There will be no odor
2. It does not attract rodents***
3. It decomposes fecal matter quickly.
**(unless you live in a huge metropolitan area that has a very active rodent population, like NY)
But it won't kill all bacteria.
And rats live in small towns, too. Even Peoria, Illinois and Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Almost anywhere there's a few restaurants with dumpsters, there are rats. I never heard of them getting into a compost pile, though.
Those who know they have rats, and wants the rats to eat bait poison, should keep any other food sources away from the rats.
Someone who has never seen rats around should not expect them to come flocking just because a compost is started up.
Kill the rats and compost them.
The ever so "clean american" phobias about bacteria, virus, bugs, rodents, and all that exist in our every day life is interesting that it comsumes our decisions about how we compost. Why worry they have been here longer than we and they don't do much to affect our lives except when they gang up on us and create blubonic plague Man-rodent-flea-virus = death to man. So why worry and stop focusing on those things that are not a concern to we gardeners. There are so many benefits to these same worrisome creations. Bugs make the soil better, rats eat the food we don't want, viruses comsume the organisms we don't want, and fungui keep the soil structured. Life is good if we don't worry ourselves about the press releases that drive our 24 hour news. Come on life is long if you garden and short if you die. Don't confuse the details between. Steve.
Here! Here!
When it's your time to go, no amount of prevention, composting, antibiotics or denial will spare you! After the first time my daughter ate cat poop and didn't die or become horrifically ill, I lost a lot of fear about such things. I figure she has a stronger immune system now anyway! Not that I encourage the practice!
If you don't compost it in YOUR garden, its going to sit in the landfill. Just don't put that compost bath on anything you plan on eating if it really bothers you. You'll be washing you hands after gardening anyway, right?!
My 105 lb golden retreiver used to eat his poop then come in and try to kiss us! Yuk! I got him some pills that were supposed to make him stop by making the poop smell less like food- didn't deter him at all.
I live in suburbia and have never seen rats here. I usually don't compost kitchen scraps except a few coffee grounds, but I have found little mice in the bin. Also had mice in the bed in front of my porch recently. That's usually where I pitch my coffee grounds.(Too lazy to walk out to the compost bin.) Maybe that attracted them.
Karen