Leaves, compost, leaves...

llama momma wrote:Thanks a Bunch, Kelejan and Rooster.
I just want to go outside and play again. Yes indeed, I'm whining.

Whine away, it's your BIRTHDAY! If Scottie had beamed me along, I would have brought birthday cake.
Cancel that cake. Got the wrong birthday gal.

Kelejan wrote:Yesterday I drove the car and went where I had seen heaps of leaves in the city streets. A nice quiet road with little traffic. Within a very short while I had collected six bags of leaves. Took them home and because they were almost dry, reduced them with my leaf mulcher in no time at all.
The day before my friend had saved six bags for me but the difference was they were large leaves and they were wet. Took me ages to push them though the mulcher a little at a time and they did not mulch down very well.
The difference between the two kinds of leaves was amazing. I think I will lay off large, wet leaves in future.

So far I have totalled about 70 bags of leaves and the majority of them are in my 4x4x4 pile. I am also amazed (but not surprised) at how they shrink down, I keep adding and adding and adding.
When I turn it in the spring, I am going to make two 3x3x3s as I think it will be easier to handle.

Snow forecast for tomorrow here, so I think I will be happy to take a rest. Every time we take a break from the rain, I have been out collecting and processing leaves as long as the light lasts. I have run out of greens etc to mix in so now the pile is all leaves except for the large worm tubes which I am still filling with worm food until it freezes over.

It is going to be such a long winter before I can have a look to see what has happened to my pile and the worms in it.

Kelejan I am so impressed with how many bags of leaves you have collected, shredded and filled your compost bed! You are amazing!

llama momma wrote:Kelejan -
Still have one more load of leaves to pick up from a friend...final leaf bag count should be over 160 bags. My new toys, a leaf mulcher, a "gorilla cart" brand of wagon, and six pallets, are sitting idle as I stare outside at sunshine and afternoon temps of 50 - 60 degrees, arghh! Hope to share some pictures in the near future of my compost "playground" in action.

Are those bags the black garden bags? Holy smokes lady you are in the gold, lol! Just get better very soon so you can be excused to go out and play!

I posted on facebook about needing leaves. It seemed like it was taking forever for anyone to let me know they had them. Then finally some results. I got 12 black garden bags from one friend, two from another and two contractor size bags from another. I collected 8 from my yard and will be able to collect 2-4 more.

My daughter made up a poster board asking for leaves and pumpkins and I hung it on my front fence. I finally had a lady stop by yesterday and she said they would drop off about 40 bags for me. It ended up being 48!

I know I am being just a bit obsessive. Our street runs North/South. In the Fall when the leaves really start falling and the wind blows before a storm, we get tons of leaves blowing North and thick collections on the sidewalks. I looked at those leaves and was trying to think of a way to trap and collect them without looking too freekish. Our street gets quite a bit of traffic so I knew I would be seen by a lot of people. I opted instead to rake the leaves in my front yard. Then the lady brought the 48 bags. My daughter was going to go out with me late yesterday and we were going to do a tarp type thing, but we got busy dragging those bags to the side yard. Then it started to rain and now we have lots of snow and we should get more tonight. It's just beautiful!

So if I counted correctly I have 70 black garden bags and 2 contractor size bags. I won't count the ones I haven't bagged yet. 88+ more to go to match Llama Momma's cache!

[quote="Kelejan If Scottie had beamed me along, I would have brought birthday cake.
Cancel that cake. Got the wrong birthday gal.[/quote]
Kelejan - If you brought cake I would have lied about my b'day and eaten it any way..

Triciasgarden
Almost all the bags are the black ones except for 8 paper lawn bags that were half-way mulched. It's midnight now and later this morning I'm picking up the last load of leaves. Don't know how many, the total should then be over 160 bags. The new mulcher is going to get quite a workout. You talked about being obsessive - I know that feeling too. We Are Leaf hoarders

That's so cool about your mulcher! I will be using my lawn mower which works pretty good except it doesn't have a catcher. I try to shoot the shredded leaves into the fence and then rake them up. Well with the rain I will have to put that on hold til things dry out a bit. I will need to also get some more manure, also when it dries out a bit! Have a great day!

My final leaf count came to about
152 bags. A dozen or so were already filled with mulched leaves. If my math is right and 10 average bags can be reduced or mulched to about 1 bag -- then I may actually have the equivalent of maybe another 120 bags for a grand total of approx. 272 unmulched bags of leaves??? Yeah, I'll have myself committed.
Here is what they look like,except for the bags obscured by the shed and the 9 bags stored in the barn in paper lawn bags to keep dry. Also the last row is obscured almost completely.
The 3 pallet bins are also hidden by the shed, the other 6 pallets are waiting to be made into 3 more bins. Behind the bags are piles of manure, hay, straw, and corn stalks. The other compostable goodies are in the garage. Btw, my husband is a patient Saint!!
After being so sick last week llama momma is moving slow. Time to mulch, store up, and pile up the heaps before the snow flies.

I'm glad you are feeling better and hope you get your strength back soon! I don't think there is any chance I could catch up with you, lol! I wonder if you hold the sfg forum record on bags of leaves. Hummmmm, should there be a contest of who has the most bagged leaves or biggest pile(s)?

[quote="llama momma"]My final leaf count came to about
152 bags. A dozen or so were already filled with mulched leaves. If my math is right and 10 average bags can be reduced or mulched to about 1 bag -- then I may actually have the equivalent of maybe another 120 bags for a grand total of approx. 272 unmulched bags of leaves??? Yeah, I'll have myself committed.
Here is what they look like,except for the bags obscured by the shed and the 9 bags stored in the barn in paper lawn bags to keep dry. Also the last row is obscured almost completely.
The 3 pallet bins are also hidden by the shed, the other 6 pallets are waiting to be made into 3 more bins. Behind the bags are piles of manure, hay, straw, and corn stalks. The other compostable goodies are in the garage. Btw, my husband is a patient Saint!!
After being so sick last week llama momma is moving slow. Time to mulch, store up, and pile up the heaps before the snow flies.
[url=https://servimg.com/image_preview.php

You must have a 100 trees to get that many bags of leaves! So great to have this available to help make new compost. We get some leaves here at our house. Hubby used his leaf blower to mulch them up for me. Put some in my compost tumbler and some on my asparagus bed and grape vines base for the winter.
A gardener's work does not stop with the first snow!

I hereby proclaim Llama momma as our champion leaf collector for 2012.

Everyone else gets an honourable mention.
If anyone feels they can beat LM's total, send in your numbers.

I think these postings on the compost threads have spurred many of us to really have a go at collecting leaves and planning for the future..

Next year (2013) we will have several categories. Loose Leaf,
Small Bags, Large Bags, Mulched, Other.

Perhaps not, I do not want to get too serious and competitive.
It is just good that we have encouraged each other and learned things we did not know before.

[quote="Triciasgarden"]I'm glad you are feeling better and hope you get your strength back soon!
Thanks!
I don't think there is any chance I could catch up with you, lol! You don't want to, it is too much!
I wonder if you hold the sfg forum record on bags of leaves. Maybe I do

Efirvin--
I don't have 100 trees. Most of the trees I have are old but scrubby and spread out over several acres and mostly blow away into the cornfields next door. Every blasted bag in the picture was brought in, stuffing my extended van, at times 23-25 bags at a time. One person I collected from had mature trees so 48 bags came from their yard alone. I am hoping after all I use and throw into non sfg flower garden areas to still have enough and not need to gather any at all next year. I would not want to expend this much effort annually.

Kelejan- I may regret the title! But Thanks
I think your 2013 idea is great. Sounds like fun.

Sounds good to me Kelejan!

Wow, what a picture. Surely Llama is the queen of leaves.

I quadruple the motion! Llama Momma you are the champion leaf collector for 2012!
:fall: :fall: :fall: :fall: :fall: :fall:

If 16 bags shred down to one, I better get lots more bags of leaves! I have some friends that have some for me but I think the snow will have to melt to find them.

So much for saying I am done with collecting leaves this fall. On my travels today I passed a house that had three very large bags of leaves on the curb ready for garbage collection. On the way back from my errand, I stopped and asked the hosueholder if I could have them and he said "Your welcome to take them".
What I like about them were that they were dry and they were oak leaves. The bulk of my leaves are birch from the eight very large trees on my property. Second in quantity are maple leaves plus a few miscellaneous from the ornamental trees along the residential roads so I was happy to get these oak leaves. I think compsot heaps need a mixed diet just as we do. The three bags were so tightly packed that I could hardly lift them and I had to have help loading and unloading.
Now to shred them and add to my pile. Our first snow has melted and the sun is shining, what could be better? More snow soon so I must get these stowed away.

Great work Kelejan, not letting bags that are too heavy keeping you from taking them home! Can't pass up something like that!

Compost confession time:
This has become a funny/freaky nightmare! 152 bags and Too many leaves in those bags are wet. This means the mulcher can't mulch without getting clogged, just like an earlier poster said... so now I am dumping leaves on the grass to dry then sucking them all back up. Then putting in the heaps or into storage. Another thing, the Toro brand mulcher claims it reduces 16 bags to one?? No way -- not even close so Very disappointed. I look at how slow this process is going and have to laugh. I can't see how I will possibly get everything put into compost heaps or stored in containers for the winter. What a Joke! Moral: Do Not collect 152 bags

LM, suggestion,

get a roll of welded wire fencing make some 4'diameter hoops and dump the leaves in there. They make great holding pens, and you can take out what you want when you want to add to the compost pile. In the meantime it will eventually turn into leaf mold, very nice stuff.

Good luck.

Oh   thank You Camprn. Wonderful suggestion, will def. do your suggestion. It reminds me of the picture in the sfg book, should have thought of it. Thank You again.

I have collected.... (not 152 bags) but many many bags from the forest behind my place. every time we go back there we come back with a few more bags.
I have tried to keep up with the mulching as I have brought them back, I feel it would be a little daunting to have that many bags to do.
My chipper mulcher tends to get clogged often, when the stuff is wet, HOWEVER on the flip side, I found it extremely hard to be out there chipping when it was hot out.
And now a bunch of something has gotten stuck in it and it froze, so I have brought my chipper into our basement I have a very tolerant husband. So the chipper is warming up in the basement next to the worm farm.
I kind of feel a.......[i]you know you are a redneck if.......
I wonder if a lawn mower would be easier, except I do not have one...
So Llama I feel your pain.

LM, good for you! All those bags should make lots of compost!
I have a new composting book, Compost Gardening, and learned something new, if it is true. Leaves should be 'leached' well before they will be ready for composting, to remove the ligin. I guess that means they must be wet first? then dried, chipped, then composted?
If this is true, then you are lucky that they are already wet! If the bags are not 'in the way' I think I'd just poke a couple small holes in each bag, and they will eventually dry out, and be ready for composting.
My leaves did fine with composting last yr(my first yr) but they did not get gathered til around Christmas, so they got rained on a lot before chipping up.
Jo

I was feeling a bit sorry for myself that I didn't have a chipper/shredder and envious of those who do have one. I have a lawn mower that does not have a bag so the leaves spray everywhere. I was thinking that this is going to be daunting shredding so many with a lawn mower and I don't have the amount of leaves that you guys have! So now I am realizing from your posts that this is going to be a ton of work no matter how we get those leaves shredded!

I like the idea of corralling the leaves in a cage. That would have to be some major cage for some of you, lol!

I am actually glad that the leaves don't shred from 16 bags to 1 bag. I was thinking that I will never get enough leaves for the amount of compost that I want to make. Now I may have a chance!

Gwn you have to do what you have to do, at least it's not in the living room!

i watched this video last year on composting leaves by leaving them in the bag

thought it was an idea that we may use if we get more leaves as our composters are full

his leaves from the fall...video date oct

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAAh3wx08tc&feature=plcp

the same bags of leaves now in march

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVNXY-fmko&feature=plcp

i thought it was kinda cool to see how the leaves change and he has other videos showing how he uses the broken down leaves to build his compost pile and then how he use that compost in his new garden beds.....

hugs
rose

Thank you everyone! Between mulching, compost heaping, making a leaf cage, and the bag option described by the "praaxus" you tube video above there are several leaf options to work with.
So right after breakfast and a touch of light housework I'll be spending the bulk of the day outside or till my energy runs out yippee! Happy composting everyone.

happy composting to you too LLM

:fall: :fall:

its wet and yucky here this morning.....im hoping to at least get hubby to take our compost's temp

hugs
rose