Every fall I see neighborhood streets lined with clear trash bags filled with garden GOLD (raked up leaves). They are just sitting there waiting to be picked up and hauled to a landfill. Organic material like leaves (and all those things you ought to be composting) do not break down in the landfill like they would in nature. Instead it decomposes without oxygen, which releases icky methane into the atmosphere.. So if you aren’t composting, START!
Anyway, that was a small tangent. Leaves. That’s what we are talking about. They are free gifts for your garden. The “browns” of the composting world. Don’t send them off to the landfill! Don’t leaf blow them back into the woods. USE THEM!
Have you seen the price of compost these days? (Or the price of ANYTHING?!) Make your own leaf compost with all those leaves in your yard and in your neighbors yard. Drive around and snag all those bags on the curb! 

When I first started researching compost I thought, “well this is too complicated for me! I would need a chemistry degree to understand all this!” The truth is, the basics aren’t all that hard to understand but there are definitely people out there who have WAY more knowledge than I do about the magic of compost. That being said, you got this. Nature does it all the time and Nature doesn’t have a chemistry degree either. If you search the internet for the perfect ratio of “browns” (carbon) and “greens” (nitrogen) for your compost and read more than one source, you will likely get confused pretty quickly. No one can agree. Really you just take those suggestions as a launching point and just jump in. No one is out there weighing and measuring their compost ingredients anyway. We basically eyeball it and keep on truckin. You learn what to look for and how to trouble shoot. What to do if it smells, what to do if it’s too dry, etc.

There are a few ways to make your own leaf compost and I will cover some of them. You just do what works for you.

I’ve seen people simply bag up chopped up leaves (maybe hit them with the mower first) in black trash bags and poke a bunch of holes in the bag to allow moisture to get in. Then store them behind a shed over the winter. The sun heats up the bag and the moisture gets to working to make you some yummy leaf compost for your garden. I personally don’t want a ton of plastic waste so I don’t use this method. 

You can also make a what I like to call a “leaf corral.” You can use some leftover fencing to make an enclosure for the leaves. Now you have a choice to make. You can simply let the leaves sit and they will break down over time. It may be a long time before you have compost to harvest. This may be ok with you. If you are in a hurry and you want to speed things up, you can add nitrogen and turn your compost. This is that “greens and browns” concept of composting. Greens can be veggie scraps, grass clipping etc. Now I’ll tell ya, I keep my composting with veggie scraps to an enclosed compost bin so I don’t attract rodents or other animals. One way you can add “greens” to your leaf compost without attracting rodents is to use coffee grinds. I know it’s not actually green but it counts as a “green” in the composting world. You can ask local coffee shops for their grinds. Turning your compost will speed things up. Compost will become hot. That’s how you know it’s working! 

Like I said before, I have an enclosed compost bin that I use for my veggie scraps. Throughout the year I always have tons of scraps to add but leaves only fall once a year. I like to keep my leaves stored in a “leaf corral” so that they are available when I need them to add to my enclosed compost bin. I also keep this “leaf corral” available so I can use them as mulch here and there. I don’t mulch the whole garden with it but I do use it around my onions and garlic over the winter. Some people use them in Lasagna Gardening which is just a no till method where you create layers on top of the ground. Leaves would be one of these layers. These layers will break down, composting in place, to create lovely soil for you to grow in.

So instead of being annoyed at the fall chore of raking leaves, be happy that these little gifts are just falling from the sky!

Get Composting and …

Happy Homesteading!