Recycle your leaves

[greygardener]

Have you got autumn leaves everywhere at the moment? Don't throw them all in the green waste bin. You can use them to help your garden.

Put them the leaves in a large garbage bag, adding a little water and dynamic lifter. Then tie the top of the bag and leave them for a few months. When you go back to the bag you'll find you have fantastic organic matter to spread into your soil that is rich in nutrients. 

You can also spread leaves directly onto garden beds as mulch. Just pop some cow manure or dynamic lifter on top to help them to break down.

[QuailFlock]

Half of my veggie patch is now covered by autumn leaves. They are the best mulch, deter weeds and keep the soil warm!

[bergs]

Hi All, leaves are the greatest asset to any gardener.

They make wonderful mulch for your gardens and break down to enrich the soil, which brings many worms.

Oak leaves are great if you can get them.

Gum leaves take too long to break down and I'm not sure if the eucalyptus is detrimental to worms, like onion and too much citrus is.

I put all my grass and leaves layered in my compost bins. I generally have three of them at different intervals of breaking down.

A bit of cow or chicken manure gives compost heat which should take care of any seeds etc.

The rule of thumb is that you have equal layers of wet and dry compost, for example, for every layer of lawn clippings you need a layer of dry matter like leaves/paper etc.

I shred all my private papers up and add them to the compost.

When my compost bins get too full, I throw the leaves and clippings onto a spare spot around the garden and later dig it in there, or spread in other areas.

Kitchen scraps go in compost as well. No meat please as it attracts vermin. I bury it in the bin and in no time it has all disappeared. Make sure you dice it up small as this helps for it to break down faster.

If you have a lot of leaves put them through a shredder of some kind to make them smaller.

Lawn mower is good to run over them if you don't have a shredder.

Going by her earlier post @Janina_G is on top of everything re composting and no dig gardening, keep up the good work.

Cheers and sweet composting.

[QuailFlock]

May I ask how everyone use their compost?
Do you dig it into the soil? Or do you leave them on top of the soil, like mulch?

[Jason]

We've got an Aerobin @QuailFlock and dispurse and dig in the compost it produces as much as possible. It's one of those jobs we should do more regularly than we do though...

[Janina_G]

LOL, not quite on top of everything,  but maybe a head start,  as I had to find a way to garden back in the 70s when I suffered 1] and injury and 2] diagnosed with the genetic condition which put a 'few' limits on living,    So it was eiher give up or think outside the box.

uTube was amazing when internet came, and the libraries were full of tips for the invalid.  .

Now that my garden is overgrown  and timet o thin out, I have oodle of tyres so not think of how to make use of them and the mountain of broken cement bricks...

But was again at it this year sweeping up all the autum leaves from the local churches, pubs gardens etc,   and neighbour their are great, they drop off the grass cuttings for me.