Wednesday, December 13, 2017

A Year in the Life of a Leaf Bin

Every year massive oak trees blanket my backyard in a crisp, brown mat of leaves. Usually, I squirrel away as many as I can in my compost area. The remainder I squish into brown paper leaf bags for curbside collection. Lots and lots of leaf bags.

Last year I finally got sick of sending all of that beautiful compost fodder off to someone else and decided to try and compost it myself. I ended up building three leaf bins in addition to my black plastic beauty to hold all of the leaves. They were still overflowing so I sent a few bags to the curb. Progress comes in strides...

What better for a photo documentary than a leaf bin, right? Here we go:

November 2016:
It's raining leaves. Hallelujah, it's raining leaves. Hey, hey...


February 2017
The leaves dropped about two feet over winter. After cleaning up all of the surrounding leaves...

February 2017
...the bin is nearly full again.



May 2017
The pile shrank to half its original size. Keep on keeping on, leaf compost.

June 2017
I added the contents of another leaf bin to make room. I also added a super secret ingredient to speed up composting

September 2017
The compost is nearly finished. Like a custard filled doughnut, my compost is hiding a "delicious" secret surprise.


November 2017 Harvest Time!



Up close and personal with the leaf mold compost. A perfect mulch.

Any leaves not finished composting went into the new leaf bin (mostly those on the outside). All of my leaf bins are full again and I am happy to report no leaves went to the curb this year!

Do you compost your leaves? If you have any tips or tricks, leave them below.




1 comment:

  1. I've been using leaves with compost, as a mulch, and using it to bury euonymus vines (a place in the yard where I'm willing to wait for it to slowly die). Thanks for your post! Great pictures.

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