Using Mowers To Make Compost
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- Опубліковано 14 гру 2021
- We gather up leaves on the property to make our own leaf compost for next year.
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Fun video. As always, good to see Gene as well.
Mowing & using what's chopped up in a multi bay compost system, is what my helpers can't grasp. I'm mowing & doing it myself 😊
I'm putting mine in with my chickens, they love the leaves and then add their nutrients to it. I'll use in my garden next year.
Josh,
Thanks for the tip on Coast of Maine! We have a dealer here in Taylors, SC!!
Ha, when I found my mower as the best way to shred my sweet corn stalks for composting, It was ON!
Thanks as always for showing market gardening not reality TV... It really is helping my special needs guys in our adult education initiative to LEARN soil blocking, growing in greenhouses and composting! We had a greenhouse donated to the program and we put it up and are now preparing soil blocks to plant beets, kale and carrots along with constructing a chickshaw.
Guess I should have looked ahead to find out you already did the leaf mulch process. Nicely done.
Love all your videos Josh. Thanks for making them.
Free organic inputs! Love it.😎👍
I just scored 20 yards of leaves from the landscaper guy down the road. Massive pile! They will give you leaves for free just like arborists will give you wood chips.
Maybe I'm in a silly mood, but I swear, I did more giggling with this video than usual. Maybe it was the speed of the lawn mowers, maybe it was Gene down on his knees making 'slurry', maybe it was the way yous guys were dressed, maybe it was the dog just standing still and looking back and forth, I don't know but I had to pause and call my beloved in and even he was chuckling. I'm so used to your serious and full delivery Josh, but for some reason this one really cracked me up! Hey, it's just the happy I feel knowing that soon, very soon, it'll be time again and my hands are itching to get into the soil. Thanks for you and Gene for beginning my day off in fun. Nice looking mix you guys made on the ground. Oh, on Jan. 1st, a law was passed here in California stating all compostible material must be collected in bins for delivery to the dumpsites; no more raw food in the trash cans. Should be interesting. No big, I've been using mine for years. Friend, bonnie ; )
I love watching your channel and your being open and encouraging to “use what you have”!
Love the making use of what you have. Our local town dumped 1088 cubic yards of leaves this year! We do this every 3 years, then let them cold compost for 2 years and have stable, ph neutral deep compost material. We spread this 8 inches deep, 1/2 inch layer of screened compost and mineral amendments and plant into. Leaves to veggie gold for us.
I love having all the leaves on my property to be able to shred and add to my compost piles. Just a heads up though, if you are mowing your leaves up over Bermuda grass, you risk sucking up some grass seed and getting that all mixed in with your chopped up leaves in your bag. If you don’t practice hot composting, it’s likely that the little pieces of Bermuda grass and the seeds will not get broken down enough. I have two separate compost piles. One that I suspect has Bermuda in it so it is only dispersed over areas of my lawn that needs topped off with compost. And then I have another compost pile that I know for sure does not have any Bermuda in it and that is what I use for my gardens. Learned this by accident one year, sooo difficult to get Bermuda out of gardens 🤪
Love leafs add them to my tumbling composter with coffee grounds, alfalfa pellets and garden waste. By following fall great compost for winter.
I did leaves last fall, heated up pretty quickly after adding some grass and kept feeding it with coffee grounds. After a year had the best looking black gold!! Didnt even turn it, just let it sit and do its thing. I even added some of the broken down pine needles from underneath our pine trees to add some microbial life to the piles.
I bought same leaf collector for my JD riding mower this year. I got all the leaves from mine and my neighbor's property who has more large trees than I do. (after confirming they don't use weed killer or fertilizers) SO... much faster than trying to collect them with a rake plus they get chopped up a bit. We both have 1 ache properties so there was allot of leaves to gather. I filled 3 compost bins like yours and covered beds which I then tarped for winter.
Sometimes I bag with my push mower and other times I rake but it all breaks down over time. I collect about 6 yards of leaves and grass and it's a great suppliment to my food forest. Worm castings make an awesome root/soil/compost drench.
I rent a Home Depot pickup truck for 75 minutes every year ($20) and get 3 truck loads of autumn leaves from my neighborhood within that time
I shred them with a mower and spread them across 1000 sq ft in my garden.
That’s about 90% of my “compost” and the soil keeps getting better
Great video Josh, definitely a resource worth using. My place is heavily wooded and I collect 10-12 truckloads of leaves a year. I compost a bunch, and primarily use it as mulch / top dressing, and also add a bit to my regular compost pile.
I (embarrassingly) collect so many leaves I can't use them all! So they become fill when I'm doing any sort of earthworks. they get added in in a lasagna style. And some (gasp) just get heaped off in a corner in the woods!
Love the Gene videos, always good compost ideas. I've been using dried grass clippings to do a Ruth Stout thing and it works great. Less weed seeds than hay, more nitrogen, and more surface area. I just lay the grass out in windrows like it's hay and dry it for two days (flip it once) and then spread it as mulch.
I got 42 Costco bags stuffed to the gills of leaves from the neighbors.
Great stuff! I’ve just finished a few weeks of leaf collection, and have about ten truckloads of leaves stashed around the homestead for a variety of uses. About rap bags of chopped leaves are sitting in the bullpen to be used as compost feedstock, and the whole leaves will get used to keep walkways covered to a depth of 6-8”. The amount of worm activity since I started on this is exponentially more than before, and I love the idea of all that mycelium spreading throughout the garden.
I had my landscaper friend deliver three truckloads of leaves to make leaf mold. I need to wet them down nd do the slurry thing like yall did. Good idea. My plan was to make a mix of Leaf mold, Worm Castings, and compost that was made from kitchen scrap, wood chips, grass clippings, etc.
Literally just made our leaf pile in the bins earlier this week here. Leaf mold compost is a amazing addition to the deep compost market bed style of gardening. I think people forget because we use compost for our media doesn't always mean that's all we need to grow in. Thanks again Josh for the video!
Me too. Got about a yard of shredded leaves.
Love the down to earth, realistic approach :)
Well done Josh... I have a suburban home in the Portland Oregon, and have used my battery powered mower to chip up our leaves for my (only four bin) compost system. You're totally right, you can find carbon to add from close sources.... and it really works... thanks..tc
Adding leaf mould to seed compost can improve germination.
Awesome use what you got !!!
It looks like you have a good amount of lawn space that could be repurposed into growing your own inputs like alfalfa. I’m currently tarping my front lawn area (after a thin coat of compost was spread over it) and will seed alfalfa into it in early spring. This will allow me to mow and collect the biomass and either compost it or use it directly as an amendment in bed flips throughout the summer.
Another great addition to add to your leaf pile is brewers spent grain. It’s a great source of N and comes already hydrated and will really speed up the decomposition of your pile, especially with frequent turning. You can have usable compost come spring just using those 2 free inputs. I also add azomite to my BSG/leaf compost piles for a really complete mineral and biological source.
I do the same chopping the leaves and store them in the paper bags and also have 4 geobins which I love! They can hold a ton of chopped leaves.
I just had to replace my harbor frieght sprayer, one of the straps broke, it hit the ground and shattered, absolutely covering me in Alaska fish fertilizer. I went with the Ryobi 4gal backpack and it actually cut my weekly fertilizer time down by half or more.
Having seen market gardeners cleaning after harvesting I wonder why it’s not more common to use a tractor on the low mulch setting to clear beds.
We have so many leaves, I am adding then to the chicken coop too and let the chickens do the chopping and turning.
But also have a big pile going outdoors. Do I need to cover it?
Nice to see your yard is still green.
For anyone that has a chipper, bush hog, or a mower you can chop the leaves up even more.
In ten year , we've added up 5 plus inches on top of clay base horse pasture turned to our new 2 acre market garden.
"CHOP AND DROP " organic matter with animals fertilizer... bear, deer, fox, raccoon, sheep, goats, and chickens. The hay was double/ triple cut for a faster breakdown without chemicals.
Our 18 acre farm gate is located 2 blocks off main street.
Just follow the videos, transform to a better lifestyle and enjoy a happier/ healthier tomorrow.
If you price back-surgery & the longevity of basic-riding-mowers you'd probably see as I do that you need a subcompact tractor with a bagger. My piles this year are over five feet tall & the machine makes it easy to mix everything to ensure all the unwanted-seeds are cooked. My reverse-rotating tiller also makes the perfectly mixed 42-inch-wide raised rows at the highest setting. If you can't get some fresh-grass in your leaves then you might try some high-nitrogen fertilizer to warm things up before it gets too cold outside.
I have done the same for years. The one thing I do different is to raise the mower deck up to help reduce the amount of grass and weeds collected.
No tarp cover? Would it help to also help heat generation?
Great video! It's my understanding that leaf compost has like 14 of the 17 nutrients needed? Looks to me if you use one single kind of compost this is the ultimate one. My suggestion if you get another mower don't get any less than a K-58 transmission. It is the start of very dependable and more rugged mower transmissions on new or used mowers.
Love leaf mold. I know you don’t like piling on more work than necessary, but it seems like you could get leaves delivered to your property from either neighbors or lawn companies and chop them up. I did that this year. I ended up with way more leaves than necessary, but I’ll have all the leaf mold I’ll ever need plus some.
I've been really interested in building a leaf pile. Unfortunately, my property is tiny so I have to get leaves from neighbors or public spaces.
I should do the same thing!
I think the biggest problems with market gardeners and their import of compost etc is tied to their lack of cover crops. For many it might be the space/time, but for most it is the effort...
doesn't get better than that
Isn't it better to let it alone for butterflies and other beneficials?
Brilliant. How long do you reckon it’ll take to fully decompose, Josh? Thanks for the video.
For 7 years in the springtime, I added 30 + trailers of free county leaf mulch to our garden, 75 rows at my old homestead in 2019.
The once red clay bed turned deep brown,and as things grew.
Leaf mulch with grass clippings and cardboard can be changed between 18 to 30 days at the right temperature with watering and covered.
Have a great day!
@@dandan8333 thank you for that. This is amazing to know especially as we are opting for the no-dig method.
Let me know if it gets hot
Mowers? Ugh! lol I know most people haven't the time or space to let leaves break down without mulching them but to me its so wasteful to mulch...it's not so bad raking them into a pile or putting them on top of resting beds. They usually are broken down by spring or at least starting to break up. Even now in the piles of whole leaves I have, if you brush away the top layer of leaves the worms usually have been doing a great job breaking them down under the surface. No disrespect intended at all but using a gas powered mechanical devise is sad when nature does it much better. I'm not knocking you for doing this, I get it, this channel is about market gardening and you're amazing at it. I just really hate gas mowers, blowers, trimmers, they are all just nasty smelling monsters to me and they are everywhere, you can't get away from the noise and the smell. With mulching them I also feel most of the goodness that leaves give us just goes into thin air. To each his own of course!
Really not sure removing all the leaves is a good idea, in nature they would be taken back into the soil by worms and microbes, thus feeding the trees and grass ready for next year, in effect you are starving your ground of the nutrients it needs. Leaves are also a good insulator, helping to keep the soil marginally warmer. 😉