EZ Composting LEAVES Only = $ Back to Eden Organic Gardening Method 101 with wood chips.
LINK to resource: http://www.spectrumanalytic.com/support/library/ff/Plant_Nutrients_in_Municipal_Leaves.htm
Publication Number:
FS824
Author(s):
Joe Heckman
Dan Kluchinski
Publisher:
Rutgers NJAES Cooperative Extension
Date Published:
11/1/1998
Number of pages:
2
Great vid 🙂
There are so many great benefits to leaf mulch which is why forests have the bio diversity that they do.
I just did the same thing yesterday with the leaves in my small backyard. Thanks for educating us.
Thanks to you, I started this year accepting leaves from landscapers doing their Fall clean ups 🙂 The pile is growing 🙂 Looking forward to spreading them on top of my woodchips for a "lasagna" type of layering. Thanks
What about pine needles?
My collection of 10 bags is waiting for me to spread them. How do you manage high winds. We have chinooks at ~40 km/hr and northern winds around same speed. I have some soil sitting in a bed, should I sprinkle it on top of the leaves or just leave them as is.
Another great video. I get loads of leaves from a nearby county park. The park workers are glad to have me haul the huge piles away and I love that they're already well decomposed in the massive piles. Completely decomposed leaves make a great starter mix for seeds and seedling in spring.
Mark made me addicted to leaves. My plants are loving it and are growing well beyond what i even thought was possible. my soil use to be hydrophobic and dry often, with thick clay deeper down. Working leaves and a few stick into the soil and mulching with leaves has vastly improved the water retention, aeration and drainage all at once and at zero cost. Plus its feeding the plants, the fungi and the worms. I have a zucchini fruit as long as my arm and almost as thick getting fatter every day now, massive pumpkin leaves 2 foot+ wide, and 6 foot high corn plants as a testament to the sucess. I will also be leaving the roots in the soil after harvest to continue to feed the soil. Thank you mark for teaching me several valuable lessons that will help feed me and my family for life. Everyone that is nurturing plants needs to see this channel and learn from the wisdom of mark.
20 tons……I somehow dont believe I can get that many by picking up from the park on weekends……
To stop leaves from being blown away by the wind, I just add a very thin layer of straw on top. So thin that I can actually see the leaves underneath and somehow this technique seems to lock the leaves in place.
What is the issue with curb collected leaves. a friend of mine showed me an article in French and explained to me that it said that the leaves collected from the city streets in Paris are burned because they are too dirty to compost, what are the dirty contaminants?
Another brilliant video when you dug up the leaf mould with your hand, I was so in awe of the texture WOW. I'm helping a friend with her garden she has so many leaves but is not able to pick them up herself due to age and MS. I take home with me a bag a day as we walk our dogs together, I have a huge pile now and there will be more to go, Ive made her a pile in her garden too, I use them all around her fruit bushes, last tear we had no weeds at all around her gooseberries. i just love your videos, thank you : )
The costs of an equal amount of fertilizer would be a lot higher for a organic gardener, who thinks they need the bags of organic fertilizer at the Walmart garden center. Garden Tone, for instance, is recommended at one pound per 16 square feet. That would equal about a100 dollars for a 1200 sq ft. garden. Or about 3800 dollars per acre. A farmer wouldn't make much money, shoveling out designer fertilizer like that, would he?
Hi Mark,I have read several online articles pointing to the negative effects of jugalone on certain plants, i.e. Nightshades, from the leaves of Black Walunt trees. The juagalone is said to be held in the leaves even after falling from the tree. I have plenty of the Black Walnut trees here on Long Island. Have you ever had these in your leaf piles, and if so, did they have a negative effect on the soil? Just curious if this is over hyped. Thanks
Does running the leaves through a chipper/chopper speed up the year break down time? I know it's creating more surface area, just curious if it shortens that year that you mentioned.
I have leaf and straw on my beds now some wood chips I went around and put puff ball spore on them today It might take off might not but would sure be a great addition to the harvest in autumn here. Great info. The nutrient info is great. I am in Switzerland you could triple the dollar price here for anything..
Hi Mark,
Talking a friend earlier, I mentioned your approach to organic matter and leaves using white millet and Sudan grass. How is that part of patch going on. I will try to go back to your videos and see if I have missed the updates. I advised my sisters in Las Vegas to a bag of Walmart budgie food (over 90% pearl millet) and a small bag of fenugreek (my favorite nitrogen fixing plant) and spread them on the hard clay soil for this purpose. I may visit them in few months and install raised beds for them.
Awsome video I loved it! Please continue. I know it takes a lot of effort to make these videos and I appreciate it! From Kentucky.
Mark, is it possible to make your 2 ft circular or square beds with fall leaves instead of difficult to find wood chips in my area?
The saving would be even greater if you added in the water savings.
Why don't you use the leaf mold shown at the end of this video to start your seeds at home?
Another advantage to having leaf mulch is it collects moisture when there is a fog
21 ft x 21 ft is 441 sq ft, 1/100 of an acre… so 6 inches of leaves on that would be worth $1.56
Great idea on the presentation, but like your other video says, they're gold! If you just paid for those nutrients and applied them to your soil, they might not have the same effect, so in my estimation, the leaves are probably more valuable when you factor in the worms and the water retention!!
Mark, are all leaves the same, or are certain trees better than others? Thanks
Hi. I’m a little confused maybe you can help me with that. In some of your videos I understood that I don’t have to worry to much about the weeds they might even help with the micorrizal fungi. And then as most everyone says and you said in this video it seems like weeds are a bad thing in the garden. I started gardening this year with very little success but I didn’t mind because I kinda knew that I’m going in blind and I’ll be lucky to have something worth while. But in all this time I’m going from channel to channel to learn about gardening and by now I feel that in your channel I finally have someone teaching much better then the rest of the channels, I finally get a better picture of what gardening is. Which BTW Thank you very much!!! I might be bothering you with more questions in the future, you’re a excellent teacher… thanks again. Hope to hear from you soon. I also live in zone 6a in New York at least I can more or less follow most of your methods and timelines.
Is wood chips the same in the NPK? Which one is preferred wood chips or leaf mold?