Post date: Nov 30, 2019 2:10:37 PM
Nitrogen for brown leaves:
Many of you have collected and piled up brown leaves this fall. Here are a few more tips:
1. Ensure you have them in a bin, or an enclosure. Helps composting.
2. If you let them be, in about 2 years they will fully compost into soil that you can bring into your garden. No turning or any work. Just letting it lie in nature.
3. If you want a quicker output for the next Spring, you need to do three things:
A. Chop them up. Use your mower, or buy a leaf chopper. Smaller the pieces faster the composting.
B. Add nitrogen. In itself brown leaves are all carbon. To quicken the composting you need nitrogen. Kitchen waste is all fine, but your quickest solution is coffee grounds. Get some free from Starbucks, and add to your chopped pile.
C. Turn them early spring. I usually have 3-4 bins of crushed brown leaves, sitting there with coffee grounds. By Feb, I pull out the bin, and rake the pile back into another bin. This way they are fully turned and aired. I repeat in March.
4. At mid March, I top all the leaf bins with simple garden soil. About 3-4 inches.
By mid April, when I am ready to begin transplants, the compost is ready to be applied to the soil.
As for snakes and pests, here are the tips:
1. Leaf piles offer warmth and are a preferred place for snakes to breed in early spring. Bin them to keep access out.
2. If you have the leaves in a corner of your garden, do not touch them until next fall. The snakes would have left by summer.
3. Never plunge your hands into a leaf pile. Even if you have bagged them for adding to kitchen compost, use a hand rake to pick them up.
4. Life is all around us. And searching mostly for food and love, and vent upon producing the next generation. Let them all live and go on with their work. Mark your territories and work with care.
If you are not treating your grass with weed killers, cut grass is a great source of nitrogen for your leaf piles.