Composting yard waste is easy
I thought it would be cool to talk about how we got rid of all the leaves in our previous old house. That, and it’s nearly midnight so my brain isn’t at its peak performance right now.
Many moons ago, we moved into our old house in the middle of November. Being first time home owners, we didn’t know what to do with all the leaves that were in the yard before closing, and we requested the seller take care of all of it! It was a bit over the top I suppose, but really, we didn’t know what we had to do with all.those.leaves.
Second autumn comes along, we raked until our fingers grew callouses and the palms of our hands hardened. We even invited a non-home-owner friend to come and have fun. There were 140 some bags total! I have a picture of that somewhere - only 1/3 of it because we couldn’t possibly have gotten it all done in one setting.
Third autumn - repeat, rinse, lather.
Fourth autumn, we smarten up and started building a compost bin. In the height of season. Very smart indeed. Towards the end of the building project, over a weekend, our fingers and noses were nearly frozen. By the time we started gathering all the leaves, it was unbearably cold (I should mention, this house was in Minnesota). The reason we started with the yard work kind of late was because, we were new parents to a chubby new baby boy and sleep were not to be had by anyone.
Fifth and sixth autumn went much smoother. Rake, gather, and dump all the leaves into the compost bins we had built. All 3 big compartments of it! Our garden benefited as well as our budget. We didn’t have to buy mulch for a long while, and it didn’t look or smell bad at all. Our then-toddler even helped with the raking, gathering and dumping!
Lesson learned: if your residence produces a lot yard waste, build a compost bin that’s big enough to hold all the yard waste (or buy a ready-made one, but those are usually hardly enough for yard waste). Your budget will thank you (no yard waste bags to buy), your garden will thank you, and most of all, Mother Earth will thank you.
Honestly though, thank goodness we don’t have to do much of that for quite a few more years yet.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I keep thinking I should build a compost bin. Any building tips?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I have wanted a compost bin for a long time. Right now my leaves are composting on the lawn. We really don’t have that many of them. I would sure like to see a picture of all those leaves. That is amazing.