Sunday, November 4, 2012

Bag Lady Strikes Again

Every year about this time I turn into the bag lady. I scour my neighbor's trash for their leaves. Well scouring the neighborhood isn't all that hard since our town composts leaves. Everyone has to put them in a nice big compostable bag or in a bin labeled yard waste. I do have to check to see what is inside it. Any yard waste could be there. This year the worst of the bags had a whole bunch of roots and rocks in it. Ick. But most were some nice leaves.

I picked this morning to do it since trash pickup is on Mondays in our neighborhood and I was busy later on Sunday. After the storm I figured there would be a lot of neighbors with bags out. My husband came with me and jokingly ranted about our lazy neighbors that hadn't left any leaves for us. Usually I don't have to go many blocks before filling up the borrowed minivan, but this year we had to travel farther than a few blocks to get what I needed to fill in my two leaf bins. Monday morning would have been a better time to pick up leaves, but then I wouldn't have had the help of my husband.

I like collecting leaves every year. Jeavons says to grow your own carbon sources for sustainability. But in a suburban or city neighborhood, leaves are an easy carbon source that don't take any space to grow. Everyone else grows them for you and then throws them away.

This year the leaves were different. A good fraction of the leaves were green. Usually I get dead leaves, but these were blown off the trees in the storm. I found more than one bag that had started the composting effort without my help of adding a nitrogen source. I wonder if it will be warm enough for them to keep composting for a while. I did add water to some of the leaves as I emptied them from the bags. Some were dry. Some were wet. I've found they can break down in a year with all the worms I now have if I can keep the leaves wet. If they are at all dry the worms shun them and they take a couple years to break down. Typically one leaf bin is used for making compost with our kitchen waste over the year. The other just sits there waiting to turn into leaf mold. If it can do it in a year instead of two, I'm always happy. I don't have enough yard waste in my urban setting to make enough compost for the garden. I don't even have enough space to make enough leaf mold if I collected more leaves. So the faster the leaves break down the better.

Now my bins are all tidied up. The four bags that are on top help keep the leaves I've collected already from blowing away. And as the bin compacts over the next few weeks, I can empty them out. Sometimes I leave them anyway as the kitchen waste composter is on the other end and it is easier to bring a whole bag over at a time than a forkful of leaves.

10 comments:

  1. Our neighbor's son was out mowing her lawn and leaves today, then bagging them for the garbage truck to pick up. He'll be gone tomorrow, and trash pickup isn't until Thursday. I'll bet there will be several black garbage bags filled with mixed leaves and lawn clippings....perfect! I will help myself :-)

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    1. Woo-hoo! I now have about 14 big black plastic bags of chopped leaves, some mixed with grass clippings! I provided the bags, the neighbor was happy to fill them and drop them over the fence!

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    2. I used to have a neighbor that did that for me at my last house. We didn't have trash pick up there. So they were happy to give it to me so they didn't have to haul it to the transfer station.

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  2. Sounds terrific. Every year I think I'll get out there and get some, but usually miss it.

    I agree, even in an area that has municipal composting, getting the leaves directly is a good thing.

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  3. Collecting leaves is what I need to work on this week too! Nancy

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  4. Ah the benefits of deciduous trees - leaves just don't fall on mass here. I love that you go and collect people's bags - and indeed that your town has special bags for composting leaves - made me smile.

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  5. you are my competition! but there is plenty to go around, that's for sure.

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    1. I didn't get anywhere close to your area of town. So I left plenty for you.

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  6. Ha! I'm not the only one who searches the neighborhood for bags of leaves...lol. The leaves are awesome; great for weed suppression and can turn them end when the season is done.

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  7. Most folks still throw away their leaves around here. Master Gardeners have been picking them up around town for several years and using them on the big veggie garden project. We use them for mulch there, which I guess serves as 'sheet' composting. After a few years of doing this the soil has improved considerably. I do pretty much the same thing with our leaves. We really don't have enough here to fill a compost bin.

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