I remember an old boy telling me years ago that leaves should not be put in the compost maker. There's a lot of them around this time of year! Can anybody confirm or contradict please?
Compost
- Thread starter fixitflav
- Start date
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The guy on The Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 on Friday afternoons explained how to do it.
How to compost leaves.
How to compost leaves.
OK thanks for that
We pile them in rows and keep running the mower over them, huge amounts shred down to not a lot
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I thought you had to put them in a plastic bag with a pint of water and let them rot down over winter?
they are very slow to rot, so you can put them in poly bags.
But if you have a lawn, and can mix the leaves and the grass cuttings (a fork may be required) the high nitrogen of grass and the low nitrogen of autumn leaves will combine to make a reasonable mix.
I mostly use them as a mulch on a flower bed, and the worms dig them in for me. The soil texture is improved.
Green leaves will compost fine, but the plant drains the autumn leaves of nutrients before discarding them, which is why they go brown and contain negligible plant food. An autumn leaf is not the same as a dead leaf and is not much use except for soil conditioning or bulbs.
The key thing here in making compost is the nitrogen to carbon ratio (N:C). This needs to be high, 20:1 or possibly greater - different sources say different things.
As a rule of thumb, things that are green are high in nitrogen and those that are brown are high in carbon. So you need a lot more, say, grass to fully compost a smaller amount of, say, brown leaves. Also the bugs that do most of the work don't move about that much, hence the contents need to be evenly mixed.
So too many brown leaves means that the N:C ratio is too low overall and in any one place the bugs will not have the right mix to work. Hence it will not compost down well. The other issue with browns is that they tend to be dry and compost needs to be damp to work, so too many browns will dry out the compost.
BTW, the contents are never evenly mixed, that is why a compost heap needs to be turned. I have three wooden bins (a cubic yard each) and move it from bin 1 to bin 2 and later on from bin 2 to bin 3. In bin 1 things break down into smaller pieces and it composts somewhat. When that goes into bin 2, the smaller pieces means it is a lot more evenly mixed and so it composts a lot faster.
I have a large garden with lots of leaves and I use them to make leaf mould. I have tried the plastic bag method [1] and very little happened. I ended up building three bins against a wall I found in the garden; 2 m³, 1.6 m³, & 1.2 m³. I more than fill the first one but when I transfer it to the second one a year later it only half fills the bin.
The traditional method for a lot of leaves is four posts in the ground in a square and then attach wire mesh to form a bin.
1. Fill a black bag with leaves, make some holes in the sides, add some water, tie the neck and leave over-winter.
As a rule of thumb, things that are green are high in nitrogen and those that are brown are high in carbon. So you need a lot more, say, grass to fully compost a smaller amount of, say, brown leaves. Also the bugs that do most of the work don't move about that much, hence the contents need to be evenly mixed.
So too many brown leaves means that the N:C ratio is too low overall and in any one place the bugs will not have the right mix to work. Hence it will not compost down well. The other issue with browns is that they tend to be dry and compost needs to be damp to work, so too many browns will dry out the compost.
BTW, the contents are never evenly mixed, that is why a compost heap needs to be turned. I have three wooden bins (a cubic yard each) and move it from bin 1 to bin 2 and later on from bin 2 to bin 3. In bin 1 things break down into smaller pieces and it composts somewhat. When that goes into bin 2, the smaller pieces means it is a lot more evenly mixed and so it composts a lot faster.
I have a large garden with lots of leaves and I use them to make leaf mould. I have tried the plastic bag method [1] and very little happened. I ended up building three bins against a wall I found in the garden; 2 m³, 1.6 m³, & 1.2 m³. I more than fill the first one but when I transfer it to the second one a year later it only half fills the bin.
The traditional method for a lot of leaves is four posts in the ground in a square and then attach wire mesh to form a bin.
1. Fill a black bag with leaves, make some holes in the sides, add some water, tie the neck and leave over-winter.
Thanks everybody for your help on this
I like this guy's way of thinking, chuck it all in
More than a pint, and I keep mine for 2 years... result looks amazing.
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