Even though the fall can fill me with dread, there is something like about the fall. It’s a bit weird,  but I like composting.  I feel like I know something that none of my neighbors do.

One of the big ironies of composting is that most of your composting material comes from the fall cleanup but most of the compost is formed in the heat of the summer. Therefore, you have to have a pile at least eight months of the year before you can say it does a bit of good.

I accidently left my grass long, but that may work out to my advantage — most of my leaves are from oak trees and they tend to take longer to compost. But I mow mine up and, with longer grass, I have more grass mixed in which will help them break down faster.  I’ve actually only done half of my yard, but I already got the garden covered with more than enough leaves.  This year, I did something different and took my existing compost (about 1 1/3 wheelbarrows full) and spread it on over the leaves.  Then I took the hose and soaked all of those leaves, grass and compost pretty good.  This came from The Complete Compost Gardening Guide, which I do recommend you getting from your library or from Amazon.com on the above link.   This should help those leaves even more and I should have some nice, mellow compost in the garden in the fall.

I was liberal with the leaves, though, and I know that they will not all compost out by the end of winter.  And that’s okay — I’ll just pile them up and put them on my compost pile in the spring.

So what will I do with the other half of the yard?  Well, I’m not going to put those leaves in the garden, that’s for sure.  I’ll probably put what I can in the pile I already have and the rest of the leaves in spots around it.