it is that time of year again..... and since i live at the end of a cul-de-sac....i get covered with everyone's leaves..... since i like to veggie garden.... what is the best way to store the shredded tree leaves that i get from my yard.... the garden is too wet to dig them in.... can i rototil them in next spring ?? should i be adding anything to them (ie: fertilizer) or just let them winter over ??
I put mine in big plastic bags and leting them rot all winter. In spring i will dump them on my garden and till them in.
Plastic bags would work. Also, wooden pallets make nice leaf mold bins. You'll have some great humus and and organic matter come next April. Can't beat leaf mold.
JK
WARRENRN1 wrote:
You can simply gather them into a pile and leave them all winter. If you want to contain them, a simple way is to get a length of cheap wire fence material and make a cylinder by tying the ends together. Put the leaves in the wire bin. Next year you can rototil them into the garden. They may need more time than the winter to decompose. I generally alternate piles, tilling in the older pile.
They are the best possible amendment for your clay soil (the one that will improve texture the most). They will compost a lot over winter if you treat them right, even if you are in a cold winter area. The freezing and thawing helps break them. And here is how you treat them right:
1) shred them, if at all possible. 2) make sure they are wet throughout. That may involve turning them in the bin or pouring some water into the bag and shaking, depending on your mode of storage. In my pile (Michigan) top leaves are usually rotten by May, but underneath I will find strata of leaves dry and virtually intact. If you do not have a rodent problem, like I do, it is easiest to put them down on the vegetable beds, and then next May plant through them. 3) give them a bit of green stuff and coarsely mix. I have used grass clippings, end-of-season vegetable plants (shredded), urea and manure. No big difference, except that grass clippings may have seeds (though not if you mow in late september, and them mow again in late october and use those clipping), and discarded vegetables usually result in dozens of small tomato plants the next year.If their composting is behind, put them under large plants (like tomatoes). They will be done composting by the end of next summer. Leaf mold makes the best greens in my experience, lettuce or arugula or chard or collard.
Make sure they are shredded, then pile them. They will compost quickly in the springtime if the winter isn't too harsh. If 2 feet of snow is on the ground from November to April (like what happened last year around my place ), then it might go a lot more slowly.
There is nothing worse than trying to dig under a foot thick layer of matted UN-shredded leaves in spring,. Thick layers of matted leaves will refuse to compost in the spring and well into summer, even if dug under; it's the equivalent of trying to compost a solid phone book. Shredding is key.
Dan nw NJ
I agree shredding is the key. I have a bag of wet unshredded leaves and that havent even started to changed colour.
However my other bag which I shreded with garden shear (unfortunatly dont have a shredder) and wetted has already started to turn into a brown/blackish color after only 3 weeks.
-- dommy
------------------------------------------------------------------------ posted via
After shredding, we put our leaves in the compost bin and watered them. The next day the bin was steaming hot. In the spring we will add the black compost to the vegetable garden.
I mow my fall leaves, as well as shrub trimmings and any other vegatative yard debris with the exception of larger diameter tree branches. Dump into a leaf pile and if handy, add a little lawn fertilizer and/or limestone and let it cook. I *might* turn the pile twice. Doesn't seem to matter whether I do or not, between the natural composting action and the worms the pile always breaks down completely.
Each spring I have more black gold than I know what to do with. I spread as much as possible on the lawn, under shrubs and around plants & vegetables.
I run over them with the lawn mower to shred them.
Ah....leaves slowly starting to fall. Time get out the 2 chipper shredders, crank them up, don respirator mask and grind up 100 sacks of leaves for mo' leaf mold.
J. Kolenovsky
WARRENRN1 wrote:
There's a chipper shredder in my shed but I can't handle it, so I'm running the mower which shreds nicely. I empty the bag around every plant I have for mulch. There's a little grass getting mowed and green with the brown is good. When everything is mulched, I will dump into a big wire bin where I contribute my kitchen garbage. Someday I'm going to have some real compost bins, but for now I just have these big wire circles. I cut a little door at the bottom and shovel good stuff out when I need it. Even if it isn't nice crumbly compost yet it will do.
Marilyn
Marilyn
I left mine in the beds last fall, and top dressed with straw this spring... both have almost broken down into the soil just in time to start all over again. Colleen Zone 5 Connecticut
that's how we do ours and leave some on the yard, especially if there are grass seeds in them, then the next bunch without the seed, we put on the garden. last fall i did fill one large black plastic bag with the shreded leaves and some soil and wet it down some as i filled it with the shredded leaves and green trimmings from the garden and tied it closed and once a week about i turned it over a few times to areate it and this summer i had some prety good looking soil! i had an area that i did not plan on planting for a while and poured it on there to finish decaying. looking good. lee h
Marilyn, you sound like me.. i finally gave my son my big chipper/shredder and only use the ole snapper to shred. i have moved since then. where i am now, there is a huge tree a bit down south of us that can nearly sufficate my pereniels this time of year with those huge leaves! i took some heavy guage wire and fastened two lengths of it to the end of a plastic covered wire stake and made me a leaf picker-upper to take them out of the herb and flower beds where they were smothering the plants and put them in a bag to be spread on the lawn to be shredded, then will mulch around the plants with them and what is left, bag up for compost. lee h
dommy wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.teranews.com:
I had a pile of non-shreded leaves last year that composted quite nicely. However, I did add nitrogen to get a good C/N ratio and occasionally dumped rain water on it. If you have a compacted wet bag of leaves, that's not going to compost fast at all because you need oxygen. I bet if you dumped it out on the ground, and stirred it up with a pitchfork, it'd start decomposing soon enough.
-- ST
I shredded 120 bags on 11/09/03 and shredded 100 bags today. I have one shredder for my home use and one for my landscape business. I don't have any grass on my residential site.
Allview wrote:
Absolutely, you are recyling organic matter.
=One method of shredding that I saw on Gardening by the Yard is to dump your leaves into a large trash can, then use a string trimmer to shred 'em up. Wear eye protection, of course, and a mask to protect yourself from flying debris.
I spent the weekend shredding my leaves with a blower/vac. (I don't have a string trimmer.) Funny, the Chinese Hackberry leaves were a bit difficult to shred, retaining much of their original form even after being run through my blower/vac. The Maple leaves, however, easily crumbled into fine particles.
Now leaf me alone. :}
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.