Dealing with mahoosive domestic leaf fall - hot compost?

What type of trees? We have the same problem with oak trees but apparently it takes 6-8 years to leach out the tannins almost regardless of the method used. We did try a couple of things when we were first here about 20 years ago with Dalek style composting bins and various worms or bacteria but When we had completely filled six of the biggest size containers with the first month of leaf clearing - and the majority still to come - we realised it was not sustainable.

Feeding leaves into a shredder and then directly into big bin bags greatly reduces the volume and so number of trips to the tips but eventually we just used the thin strip of woodlands between our garden and the others to dump them. Make sure you spread them out though or they just form a big wet mound.

Leaf mulch.

We have a leaf mulch cage and a compost setup, but they can only process less than 5% of the leaves we get. We have a line of 40' tall limes across our front, our street is an avenue of them and across the street into the prevailing wind is the park with about 650 deciduous trees of various types. On a bad day the MX5 has been lost to view.

We have resigned ourselves to multiple trips to the tip weekly in the season, and made the process easier by buying half a dozen old school bins with lockdown lids, which both keeps the car clean and cuts out the faff with holding bags open. Only bother with leaf vacuum around plants in borders, everywhere else is quicker with rakes and scoops.

Napalm

The leaves need shredding and then mixing with some “green” compost. Grass cuttings help, but only a bit.

We live on an 60's estate that was built in a forest and designed to leave as many trees in place as possible, it's a bit like living in Center Parcs but with slightly bigger houses and no river rapids. Anyway, we are surrounded predominantly by Scot's Pine, Oak, and Silver Birch. It's a beautiful place but by christ the constant (year round) clearing up from the trees gets boring! Leaves, pine needles, pine cones (mostly chewed up by the squirrels), acorns (some buried by the squirrels), bits of branch, blossom, catkins, pollen, .....it's endless. Our cars are usually covered in tree sap, bird poo, and squirrel poo, plus leaves and pine needles that get into the window seals and under the bonnet.

Anyway, I digress. We have wheelie bins for garden waste (council service that we pay for) and most weeks from October to January I could fill ours more than once just with leaves. No way I can get all the extra to the tip so I keep all the surplus in a pile in front of the house. I then either squeeze them into the wheelie bin over time or with any luck the council street cleaning vehicle comes by and hoovers them all up. Don't have room to compost them, plus it would take too long, plus we don't really have plants to put the compost on!

You know those foam pits. Yeh one of those, and a ramp 🙂

We have wheelie bins for garden waste (council service that we pay for) and most weeks from October to January I could fill ours more than once just with leaves. No way I can get all the extra to the tip so I keep all the surplus in a pile in front of behind the house. I then either squeeze them into the wheelie bin over time

Exactly. Not quite sure why anyone would do it any other way, or do some councils not do green wheelie bins? In which case, nightmare.

At my folks' plant breeding nursery in the Highlands as a youngster, we had the leaf mould in a 4 year, 4 pit cycle. They were living and working on the edge of a mixed woodland, with mature pine, beech, larch, birch, ash & oak in their ground. Plus numerous exotics of all sizes and origins, so autumn and winter leaf clearing was a big task. Pits were several cubic metres each and dug into a slope, with chicken mesh as a breathable lid to keep most of it inside while it rotted. Occasional stirring helped and the resulting premium mould/loam was added to garden compost from heaps, hand dug peat, sand & fine gravel to help make various mixes of potting compost.
So, if it took 4 years to rot well in big pits, you'd probably need a longer time than that on a more domestic level.

Some councils reduce green waste collection over the winter and others charge for it.

Presume for composting you’d need quite a big hole? Don’t you have to let leaves sit for a while before composting then anyway?

Alternatively: get some of those big 850kg bulk gravel/sand bags, then find a windy hilltop and go 'fly tipping'..?

Whatever, don’t be one of those ar@@s with a leaf blower, who blow all the leaves off their property into the road 🤬

I recognise the problem entirely.... we've got 5 very large beech trees in our front garden, our neighbour one side has a massive oak tree and our neighbour the other side a reasonable size maple plus other assorted medium sized deciduous trees.

Then there's the back garden.

Fortunately we have a strip of land down one side of the drive which we rake, blow the leaves and over a period of time take the majority to the dump.  A never ending task.  It's lovely having the trees but it's not without it's problems.

I've got 2 large Oak trees and neighbours have 2 more. Much as I hate leaf blowers, I've had to get one which I use on sucky mode only as it chops the leaves quite finely.

Means we can get loads more in the wheely bin - so much so you can hardly move the thing!

I can get away with 2 big clear ups each autumn followed by a tidy early spring, usually.

We've got an enormous number of trees in our back garden. I tend to do a mixture of blowing the leaves into a hedge where they seem to disappear over the winter. Running the mulching mower over them. Blowing them into a piles. Collecting trailer fulls in my ride on mower and then slowly putting them onto a bonfire at the top of the garden.

New baby this season, so probably have only done a half arsed job, hopefully a few mows in spring will sort everything out and the grass won't have been klilled off.

Worms in the lawn are usually pretty effective at getting rid of quite a bit of ours here in our (slightly wild, scruffy) garden.

Leaves don’t compost in the same way as other green materials. Usually you pile them up in a wire cage or put them in binbags and wait for 3 years.

Absolutely shocked by some of the responses from a usually "eco minded" bunch. But then again image is clearly a bigger factor to some folks.

Our garden has huge leaf and twig fall, and we do nothing. Leave it. Come spring the majority has decomposed. Nice healthy soil and the worms pull it down. Quick run over with the mower in spring and it's business as usual.

Driving to a tip......for leaves.....utter madness.

And as for WCA dumping them on someone else's land. Wow

If worms and other detritivores didn’t exist we’d be under metres of leaves.

Another vote for just leave them where they are. It’s part of a natural cycle and nature will takes it course.

I don't see what's wrong with taking them to the tip. I do that about once a year or maybe twice, once so far this autumn with three builders bags in the van as full as I can lift. Also usually take a few builders' bags worth of prunings etc. through the year. I do compost some stuff on site but there's simply far too much to cope with all of it and the tip recycles the garden waste (especially woody stuff) into compost far more effectively than I can. If I didn't collect the leaves I've have a wet soggy mass all over the patio out the back door because it's a bit of a collection point at the bottom of a slope.

I don't collect them off the borders or worry much about the lawn but wet soggy drifts of leaves on paved and gravelled areas just don't decompose nicely.

In the spirit of things, have you considered burning them....

😉

I live in the middle of a forest.
I have about 400 trees just on my property. And another 1000 acres of forest surrounding me.
I just rake them off the grassy bit of the lawn onto one of the meadowy bits, or just hurl it into the forest.
It's all rotted down by the following summer.

In related news, I'm sat in the hot tub and there's an elk stood just behind the trees on the rise above me, about 6-8 metres away, watching me while it chews greenery.
Not sure how much longer I'll have to stay in here.

Mert, have you evaded the Elk yet?

Yes, thankfully, he was watching me (bloody pervert) for about 20 minutes. My beer froze.

Then he spent another 15 minutes crashing round the forest. Now sat in the living room with a whisky.

I'm sat in the living room, not the Elk. Though i've just double checked, Älg in swedish is actually Moose, not Elk.

So it was a MOOSE watching me.

I've made that mistake every year since i moved here.

The leaves need shredding and then mixing with some “green” compost. Grass cuttings help, but only a bit.

You may want to add some re-cycled beer to the mix too!

Ours get collected into the composting wheelie bin as our council still collects through the winter. We have a stand of mature oaks between us and the road and a garden covered in pebbles which requires regular attention through this part of the year.

Then he spent another 15 minutes crashing round the forest. Now sat in the living room with a whisky.

Meanwhile what are you doing?

@mert can I come and live with you please? It sounds great.

😂 the commute to the UK is a pain.

We have a hot box. As long as you have a supply of grass cuttings to mix 50/50 with the leaves I reckon it will break them down in about six weeks. We throw in all our food waste (cooked after bokshai and uncooked as is) and it breaks down no probs. I have to add shreaded cardboard in with the grass cutting and it breaks the cardboard down no probs in 6 weeks. It runs at about 60 degrees and the waste water drains out the bottom.