Live Oak Leaves are Falling - Feed Your Compost!
Posted by Chad Norman March 25th, 2008 .
I’ve been slowly raking the live oak leaves as they fall, because I know my compost pile won’t see a bounty of browns like this until later this year. Having Spring-molting trees like live oaks gives Lowcountry composters like us a definite advantage, making it easier to maintain the proper chemical balance while our garden waste cooks.
In years past, I would have let the yard get thick with fallen leaves until I mowed them into powder in late March. Not this year - I’m feeding “the pile”. So if you’ve got a compost pile too, join me by not letting those live oak leaves get away!
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Chad-
Are you worried all those leaves may stall your compost pile? I had ammonia smell coming from mine a few weeks ago. At the same time, there was clearly no decomposition. I added some dry leaves hoping to boost the carbon content. I think I overdid it, because it took another 2 weeks of adding nitrogen rich kitchen scraps for the pile to get cooking again. The ammonia smell went away immediately, but it didn’t heat back up for almost 2 weeks. In fact, I think it may have been the waste veggie oil (I use it for my benz) I dumped into it that really boosted it back into balance.
How often do you turn yours?
Josh
Our pile is only 6 or 7 months old, but seems to be doing fine. It actually doesn’t really smell at all. It’s starting to look dark and rich when I turn it, but not done cooking yet for sure. I’ll be posting pics of “the turn” soon.
Mine’s a bit younger than yours. It only smelled of ammonia (too much nitrogen) I think because we had a rain spell a few months back during which I put a larger than normal batch of kitchen scraps. Following this event, the ammonia smell arose, and then I added a wheelbarrow’s worth of dry leaves.