Step 1 – go to a bougie neighborhood where people actually rake up their leaves, and leave them on the curb, nicely wrapped like a present.
Tip – Take a moment to examine the contents of the bag, sometimes they contain lots of sticks or poison ivy. Black Walnut leaves can be hella problematic. Identify before gleefully scooping them up.
Step 2 – Secure leaves in whatever vehicle you have access to. We have crammed leaves in all manner of vehicles. If you live in urban or suburban neighborhoods with nearby neighbors, you might just be able to walk, or use a wagon or wheelbarrow to gather them.
Tip – No one likes to drive behind a vehicle that is dumping leaves everywhere and also you’ll lose your precious materials, so securing is an important step! We learned this the hard way.
Step 3 – Make it rain! Dump those leaves! This is part of our graywater system, that also receives a ton of runoff from the roof. They will also help to insulate our hardy banana tree, dahlias, lantana, snapdragons, hydrangea, and whatever the else we put in there.
This is our crazy billboard lined cold / vermicomposting area – before the leaves. On the left are some livestaking projects in black grow bags, the white mesh thing was dumpster dived, but it works as a soil filter when we’re pulling stuff out of here to add to the beds. The bulkier material is left in here to further break down. Please note the tiny baby pumpkins (squash) that I grabbed from work, they eventually started to rot so in they go! The cardboard box at the back is where the backdoor is. It’s extremely easy to just toss in kitchen waste.
After the leaves! So much better! We will keep hunting for more. We feed this pile with biological matter year round. It’s kind of huge so it takes a lot of matter to fill it, but we have so much soil to amend. This is on the north side of the house, it is always shady and a bit moist. The billboard does have a few holes in it for drainage, sometimes we have intense downpours and we don’t want the worms to drown.
V estimates that this is actually ¼ the size of a full billboard, and cost approximately $10 to line. He found a guy on Craigslist who takes down billboards back when we lived in Atlanta, and got them for crazy cheap. The most expensive things in this photo are the tools and the black grow bags.
V knows that blue is my favorite color, so he thought it would make me really happy to see the blue of the billboard.
Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import) 