Leave It Alone – the Art of Passive Composting

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Gerald Klingaman

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Photo Credit: Phil Jaros

The leaves your kids play in today can be the rich compost of your garden next year.

Fall is in full swing at my house. The spiraling descent of oak leaves and the thud of acorns on the roof mark the beginning of another gardening season. The hillside where I live produces countless leaves, and each neighbor has developed a routine for dealing with the abundance of the season. Some call in the professionals and pay the price for someone else to deal with the leafy situation. Others choose to ignore what’s on the ground completely.

I’ll admit to using the do-nothing approach in a few outlying portions of my landscape. The decaying leaves form a nice beige mulch in my beds, protecting little plants over winter and creating a pleasant uniform look. Of course, leaves tend to blow around, so therein lies a problem. One fall, having way too much time on my hands, I undertook a research project to solve this blowing situation. I went to the lumberyard and came home with giant aerosol cans of spray adhesive. Figuring that a light application would stick the leaves together, I set to work spraying. All went well until my wife let the dog out. It was not a pretty sight.

Then there are the baggers. Just as my mother used to always keep us informed about how many quarts of green beans she canned each summer, baggers like to keep us posted on their leaf-bag tally. In my neighborhood, few bags ever seem to make it to the city compost yard. Every fall a caravan of old pickups and Lincoln Navigators prowl the streets, looking for bags to claim for their own. As the bags are loaded, these leaf pirates cast furtive glances over their shoulder to make sure the boys in blue aren’t going to haul them off to the slammer.

But the very best way to deal with leaves is to compost them yourself. I find composting a rewarding experience – probably because it satisfies my tendencies toward cheapness. The idea of getting something for nothing is pretty appealing. And if you use the passive approach to composting, it doesn’t even take a lot of work.

Warnings

Be careful of adding weeds that contain mature seeds to a passive compost pile. In theory, composting temperatures can get hot enough to kill weed seeds, but these temperatures are only achieved in active systems that are routinely turned. I always try to pull weeds before the seeds have matured (and these are safe to add to the pile), but invariably some are often missed.

Facts

The nutrient content of composted leaves varies according to the system used and the kind of organic matter being composted. Because of the typical low-nutrient status of composted leaves (as opposed to composted animal manures for example), leaf compost is best used as a rich soil amendment or nutritive mulch.

Tools

There are a number of compost systems home gardeners can try. All will work if used according to directions, but before investing in one, make sure it has the capacity to handle the volume of organic matter you have to deal with. If yours is a small garden with just a few annuals and no big trees, then a small drum composter may work fine for your needs. If you face an onslaught of leaves every fall, make sure your system has the capacity to satisfy your needs.
Breaking raked leaves into pieces by either shredding or mowing before composting increases the surface area and speeds the rate of decay. Frequently turning your compost pile to uniformly mix and aerate also speeds decomposition.

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