LEAVES

Eventually you will pull into your driveway and one thing will stand out on it's own; leaves. After reminiscing about jumping into a pile or stuffing a scarecrow, you will probably decide on raking them up and bagging them, bringing them to the curb.

Bagging is one of the most labor intensive techniques. You have to bend down scoop a lot, then drag the leaves to the curb. Bagging also uses bags, no pun intended, that are less degradable than the leaves they bundle. There is also transportation of the trucks that are used to haul off your leave load to the local land fill to take up space. But maybe you're not a bagger, maybe you're a burner, or a shredder...

Burning has to be done with lots of caution, as well as a permit in some areas. The burning of leaves may also cause allergies to be aggravated. But most importantly, burning and bagging are also the biggest waste of a great compost ingredient. Leaves make awesome compost! There are a couple of ways to do it. One is to build your compost bin and scoop up the leaves and throw them in. In one year you will have a nutrient rich compost with this technique. If you add grass clippings in the spring you will have both carbon and nitrogen rich compost.

Another way to compost, is by shredding. If you want a new gadget, get a mulching mower, www.snapper.com has some. Mulching mowers shred grass up into finer pieces and recycle the pieces back into the lawn, this works for leaves too. You may need to go over the yard a couple of times to get a fine enough mulch. You can shred leaves with your lawn mower too, and if you run over them a couple of times they will be fine enough to leave (lol) right there on the grass. Getting a real fine shred on those leaves allows the air to circulate enough for microbial decomposition. If you bag your shredded leaves, you can bring them to an area of soil, like your garden, and do some 'sheet composting', where you put a layer of the shred across the top of the soil. The layer can be rototilled into the soil, mixing in the nutrients and speeding up the process.

You can't get good compost by not doing anything. In fact, leaving the leaves on the yard will most likely cause damage to what's underneath. The leaves, when left untouched, become damp and dense, allowing no air circulation, which promotes the growth of bacteria. Ewe.