Shred Your Leaves!

Wow, I got really lazy over the last few months in terms of shredding leaves. Yesterday, I saw there were some bugs flying around the top of the pile and realized it was because the last time I added fresh food to the pile, I forgot to add fresh leaves. The leaves I re-covered the pile with were un-shredded, and so it was only a matter of time until I needed to fix it. Not everyone has a shredder, but maybe your neighbor does?  It's really important and makes all the difference. By doing so, you'll get greater coverage for your food scraps, the material size is smaller, meaning it'll get to work quicker and lastly you'll see much higher composting temperatures. Further, you'll be able to store more in…

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Leaf Hoarding!

Luckily this wasn't far from home, so I got to work stashing bags in my yard to last me through the winter. I'm about to build a new pile altogether and I'm going to need a nice 12-18" base of leaves (the leachate sponge) to get started... this will do it!

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Leaf Shredding Season!

The leaves are falling- I hope you're like me and are frantically collecting them for composting. When I got my leaf shredder, I remember reading something saying 7 bags of unshredded leaves will fit in one single bag... I don't know about that. Regardless, I got three relatively large bags into this one big bag. It saves me space, and more importantly I can get my compost pile cooking. I've been neglecting shredding for several months, as I wanted to compost as if I don't own a shredder like most people. My pile has shown this change, as it has only been cooking in the 90F - 110F range instead of the usual 130F+. Another cool benefit to shredding is that when you add a layer to the compost pile,…

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