The usual directions for making a compost heap call for a lot of physical effort on your part and quite a bit of your free time.
You’re advised to prepare the heap just so:
- To introduce manures, or inorganic chemicals, or organic activators
- To use so much soil to so many leaves, to make layers of this and layers of that
- To periodically take the temperature of the interior of the heap, and so on ad infinitum
Quantity of Leaves
All this may be just fine and dandy, provided your file of compressed leaves measures only a few square feet.
But if you have to deal with at least two tons of leaves, then the whole procedure is quite forbidding to the gardener without hired help.
You can’t even collect and pile that quantity of leaves with baskets, sheets, ordinary wheelbarrows, or the puny lawn brooms and leaf rakes now on the market.
So far as I know, the only advantage offered by a fancy compost formula is that it makes the leaves rot down faster.
Massaging of Leaves
But that reminds me of the mountaineer’s answer when advised by a passing tourist that his hogs would fatten much faster if he fed them “boughten” food.
“Shucks,” replied the mountaineer, “what’s time to be a hawg!” That’s how I feel about compost—“What’s time for a pile of leaves!”
The leaves on our place, when tramped down, fill a chicken-wire bin 20 by 25 feet to a depth of 4’ feet. We use two bins of this size, filling each on alternate years.
At the start, of course, we did lose a year, but we saved our backs and were able to use our spare time otherwise than in the mixing and massaging of leaves after we had them piled.
Stomping of Leaves
Since then, we’ve always had one heap in use while the other was in the making. The leaves of each autumn, that is to say, are heaped for two winters and one summer before they are used.
After collecting the leaves into the bins, all we do is stomp them down more or less level.
The finished top surface is flat, or better still slightly concave, to catch all the rainfall, and then we forget about them until we want to use the leaf mold anytime a year later.
But first, of course, you have to rake those leaves and haul them to the bin. That means a haul of several hundred feet from some parts of the place.
Oak Trees
There are over 100 oak trees on these grounds, including numerous different species. We don’t start raking until all the leaves are down, except for those on a few species that do not fall until the following spring.
Then, when the leaves are “in case,” as the Hurley tobacco folks say, they are raked into large drifts to remain damp until we start hauling them to the bin.
In operations of this size, you need a leaf cart that will allow you to transport the leaves without lifting them and tramp them down to pack in a good load.
The cart shown in the accompanying illustrations has been in use since 1928. Its top opening is 2 by 5 feet and 3 feet deep at the center. It is made of smooth galvanized sheet iron with a wooden frame outside.
Using of Wheels
The wheels are of the type used on children’s bicycles and tricycles, mounted on stirrups made of ½” by ½” inch iron. The stirrups are attached to oak boards fastened onto the side of the frame.
When loaded, this cart holds 150 to 200 pounds of leaves, depending on their dampness and degree of packing. It takes 60 such loads to fill a bin.
Incidentally, the cart can be used for hauling all kinds of things besides leaves and compost. It can be emptied in either of two ways.
By lifting the handle and turning the cart upside down, it can be emptied all at once or tilted over and emptied piecemeal with a shovel or fork
Aluminum Apron
It is filled by tilting it over, anti-packing the leaves down against the side that lies on the ground.
The rake we use, which is also illustrated, is homemade too and it is no puny article. The long teeth will comb through iris and daylily foliage with perfect ease.
The aluminum “apron” above the teeth prevents the leaves in our 18”-inch-deep drifts from jumping the rake.
I wish I could show you our finished compost. The 1946 leaves, for instance, were 4 feet deep when we had stomped them down in the late fall.
Kind of Manure
By the fall of 1947, they had rotted down to a black, compact mass, almost as solid as a plug of chewing tobacco, about 18” inches thick.
This is basic, fundamental stuff. It’s pure, unadulterated leaf mold like Mother Nature makes when she builds good, fertile soils. And it is not as acidic as one might think.
To this basic material, when you use it, you add whatever chemical fertilizer is needed by the plants that are going to get it.
You make whatever kind of manure you want, whether it’s for azaleas or beans, huckleberries, or iris.
Weather Permitting
Without hired help, with no daylight after office hours during the fall and winter, and with only limited time available at the weekends, weather permitting.
You just can’t make compost on this scale by one of the complicated methods calling for alternate layers, manures, chemicals, activators, turning and mixing, and so on and on.
But by the system described in the foregoing paragraphs, and with the homemade equipment mentioned, you can make as much compost as you can use.
You won’t, it’s true, have any compost the first year you start, but after that, you’ll have a constant supply just as long as you have a supply of leaves.
44659 by K. E. Steinmetz