Having even a small amount of your homemade compost is worthy. You can definitely make compost with just leaves, grass clippings and the kitchen scraps and bunny poo. This will help handle the weeds and help conserve moisture in the soil through your hot dry summers. When it comes time to plant just rake aside the area where you are planting your row of seeds or transplanting your seedlings. It really only shreds leaves but it does so very well. The machines are light weight and provided you have a long enough extension cord can be easily moved and placed over the area you are wanting to cover. There is an upside down weed wacker type thing in the bottom and out the bottom you get a very nice pile of shredded leaves. And I share my shredder with neighbors and with the Community Garden.Īn electric leaf shredder is essentially a hopper that can hold a bag of leaves. I have six big trees in my yard so a lot of leaves. You have enough leaves in your life that you might actually want to invest in an electric leaf shredder. Unshredded leaves tend to mat and can prevent water from penetrating into the soil or through a compost pile. It is also helpful to shred your leaves before using them in a compost pile. I would strongly recommend shredding your leaves before spreading them onto your garden. Earthworms and ants and I imagine other critters will pull the leaves down into your soil at a rate that won't overwhelm your soil's balance. The material will act as a mulch and will break down over the year. If instead of tilling in your leaves you simply left them on top of your soil you would not get the nitrogen depletion. But even the combination of leaves and spring grass is going to occupy those microbes and tie things up at the time you are also sowing your garden. The grass is more nitrogen rich, especially in the spring. Because you waited until Spring and tilled in the leaves with some of the early grass mowings things went rather well. The microbes in your soil need nitrogen in order to multiply and eat up that carbon rich food the leaves provide. I think though that you do have a case of nitrogen depletion. Often dry areas tend to have alkaline soil. If leaves do sour the soil in your area that might actually be a bit helpful. Souring usually refers to lowering the pH, in other words making the soil more acidic. I wonder though about it souring the soil. Leaves can be a great addition to the garden. I'm going to go through your questions bit by bit. Some Options on Using Leaves Including Composting I live in Sandy Utah, cold winters and hot dry summers. That's what I have to work with other than food scraps and my daughter saves her bunny poop for me. I get enough leaves to completely cover the garden with about 6-8" of leaves, I mow my lawn about once a week and get about three large wheelbarrow loads each time.
GRASS CLIPPINGS IN GARDEN PLUS
I grow a large garden, it's about 1/3 of the half acre plus all of the fruit trees, grape vines, strawberry and raspberry patches. My question is will my compost turn out good with only being able to add to it layer upon layer when I mow through the summer? I can only mix green and leaves as I mow my lawn. I have a half acre of ground with several trees which give me tons of leaves but the only green I have is my lawn clippings to mix with them. So now I am going to start composting, the only problem I think I will have is not having enough green matter to mix with all of my leaves. I think I have found that my great grandfather was right, I am having a real problem growing gardens now because the leaves have depleted the nitrogen out of the soil. For many years I have just raked my leaves and dumped them in the garden in the fall and spread my lawn grass clippings out in the spring and tilled it all in.
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