[mistel]

Up here in Canada it is leaf raking time. All my neighbors dutifully pack their leaves nicely into brown paper bags and place them at the curb, where two men in a huge truck will come and magically make them disappear.

This makes me nuts. Everyone of my neighbors has space to compost. I have a compost pile but my wife and I constantly bicker over it. I want to take the lazy approach, just leave it sit for a year or so, (we have lots of room in the yard), but the wife insists on constant maintenance. So I am always turning the pile.

So I finally had enough. The wife wanted me to go and buy some bags to put our leaves in this year as we have a good size pile right now. I had tried making a rotating composter with little success. So I ordered this monster.

http://compost-twin.com/

I had talked with someone who had one and he said it worked really well. It is supposed to make a batch of compost in 2 weeks. I got it today and will put it together tomorrow.

Just had to get that off my chest

Thanks

Peter

[Tyler_JC]

It is much worse than that.

I've seen teams of men using leaf blowers and trucks with suction devices to remove the leaves from the grass. Small bulldozers push the piles of leaves into easy piles so that the trucks can suck them away...

It's absolutely ludicrous and will disappear relatively soon (God willing).

[Denny]

Saw the funniest thing today, suction leaf pickup by the city. A team of four, one driving, the others using some rakes and constatntly manipulating a vacuum infeed for a device which loadded the leaves into an open top truck.

Yes, open top truck. That was crazy, the truck filled up on our street, but as it left and picked up speed, the leaves were blowing in steady stream out of the top of it.

Even when loading they just crept along, it took them about 20 minutes to do a 150 m. stretch. I think they could have done just as fast using rakes alone.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Denny', 'S')aw the funniest thing today, suction leaf pickup by the city. A team of four, one driving, the others using some rakes and constatntly manipulating a vacuum infeed for a device which loadded the leaves into an open top truck.

Yes, open top truck. That was crazy, the truck filled up on our street, but as it left and picked up speed, the leaves were blowing in steady stream out of the top of it.

Even when loading they just crept along, it took them about 20 minutes to do a 150 m. stretch. I think they could have done just as fast using rakes alone.

[SILENTTODD]

Don’t worry, in less than the next 5 years you will chop down those trees for fire wood (unless they are fruit or nut trees). And growing corn, potatoes, or tomatoes on that same ground! No leaves to worry about!

[mommy22]

I have often wondered if somehow, fall leaves could be turned into ethanol. At this time of year, there are leaves everywhere (our town also has the big vacuum cleaners that come around and suck up the leaves) and if the trucks could take them to the nearest ethanol plant...well there you go! All our oil problems solved!

[gnm]

I don't understand this obsession with raking or otherwise cleaning up leaves. Why not just leave them where they fall? Thats what I do. But then I live in a forest...

-G

[mistel]

FWIW

I got the composter assembled today and filled it with leaves. I'm not sure if it is going to work in the winter but I will update my progress. At least I haven't bagged any leaves.

Peter

[inculcated]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'O')ak leaves are notoriously slow to compost so you must fertilize or piss in them to add nitrogen to the cellulosic carbon. At a ratio of approximately 25:1 dry weight leave:urine. Otherwise your leaves will merely blow into your neighbors yard and enrage them. or burn their houses down.

[Ludi]

Is there a hand-powered shredder commercially available, or do you have plans for building one?


Thanks.

[inculcated]

It's a total kluge. Use a manual lawn mower. Take off the handle. Mount it to a frame that has a hopper with a 1" wide outlet just above the cutting edge, and that has an open base that can rest on top of a 40+gallon drum. Cut a large disc, 2' diameter, from some scrap plywood. Attach that to one wheel, then manufacture a crank handle out of a bike pedal. Gives a rigorous workout in use. Make sure leaves are fairly devoid of any moisture to avoid clogging. As you take leaves from the barrel and place into the second bucket for use next to your collection bucket, make sure you re-moisten them. Your aggregate for the composting collection bucket needs moisture to bind, lock down odor, and promote themophillic action...

[dinopello]

Around here, you rake your leaves to the curb and a giant vacuum truck comes and sucks them away. They also will collect up unbundled brush. They take all that to the central mulching and chipping center and store it there until you order some. You can go to the center and pickup (that's free) or they will dump it in you driveway or yard (for a fee) and you take it from there.

[WisJim]

In our city, the city trucks will pick up bagged leaves. They take them to the landfill area (not much landfilled there anymore, just collection station), and the bags are opened and leaves put into huge piles which eventually become nice well-rotted leaf mold, which is (so far) free for the taking for city residents. I usually fill 20 or so 5 gallong pails a couple of times during the year, plus fill the truck and trailer at time or 2. They also sometimes have huge piles of wood chips from grinding up limbs of trees that are removed by city crews during the year, also available free. The chips go fast, though.