Yep, we raked this morning. No, the town is not leaf free. 😉 Yes, I have a lovely amount of leaves that are now composting in the front garden in wire mesh baskets all ready to do its thing and turn into lovely nitrogen and carbon-rich plant food. 🙂
There were 3 of us there this morning, my mate S, L from town to whom I initially proposed the idea and I. Armed with over 1L of coffee and various rakes and trailers we headed to the park and got started. Liquid amber, pin oak and oak leaves all raked and mixed together. 🙂
I only stopped working for a second.
This was one of the prettiest liquid amber trees I have seen with green, red, yellow and brown.
We did our best not to harm the houses of the little people and spoke on all topics of politics to permaculture and basically had a great time.
Amanita muscaria – the home of fairies.
We raked as carefully as we could around these beautiful but poisonous toadstools but sadly we did damage one just emerging and this one pictured was knocked too.
We finished up back at L’s place helping her to rake up her plane tree leaves and talking further on all things compost. We had swelled our group to 4 though as Allegra was keen to come and help.
Helping to squash the leaves into the bag. She actually picked up heaps of them too.
One of L’s compost piles. I am so jealous. She has 4 or 5!
The afternoon saw the leaves transferred into baskets to turn into lovely humus rich black gold to spread around my garden and into which I hope to plant fruit trees. We got 2 more poplar trees down too, rather large ones and I can actually see the end of these rather large and challenging weeds. I’m already planning the replacement trees that will go in once the poplars and hawthorn, blackberry and willows are gone. 🙂
Both the trees are down and all but cleared away too. Well done guys.
I finished off the afternoon with a very hot bath (I can still barely move I am so tired and ache so much) and I feel like I have really achieved today. It’s a heady feeling.
Well I am in much need of sleep after a late night (ok, I was in bed by 11 – I must be getting old 😉 ) attending a wonderful eco-conscious 50th birthday party to celebrate with my mate Gav, and the early start today (I was awake before 4, worried I would sleep through my alarm at 6 😦 ) so this is short and sweet.
What did you get up to this weekend my fellow hippies?
Rabid Little Hippy 
What wonderful leaf mulch you will have when it all breaks down.
I sure hope so. 🙂 With a mix of leaves, manure-y goat straw, some fireplace ash and charcoal, a LOT of leaves, some very well rotted lucerne straw found lurking where our temporary wood pile had been and some freshly mown grass on the top it should, along with some worms (yet to come) and compost activator (on hand and hopefully to go in today) turn into something nearly good enough to put on a plate! Lots needed for my almonds and oranges, chestnuts and walnuts that I will be planting out soon. 🙂
A big job well done 🙂
Paying the price today though. OUCH! 😦
I bet! The trouble with a good days we work, we then spend a couple of days wondering why we do that to ourselves!
Exaclty! I know they say to get back in the saddle and all that but what if you can’t actually physically manage to do that! 😉
I’m so envious of all those leaves. I have a friend who gives me bags of oak leaves from her garden and if I put them in the mulcher, they practically turn into soil there and then. There’s something about deciduous tree leaves that make them compost so quickly; they’re so much better than eucalypt leaves.
Im thinking of my home town, Narrandera – The Town of Trees. Nearly every house has a plane tree outside and they are big enough to canopy over the road so you drive down a tunnel. Come autumn though and its madness with all the leaves. Great fun for kids.
Imagine how much compost they could make! Armed with a giant eco-friendly vacuum to suck them all up (it would be hours of raking I imagine) and mulch them and scrummy compost would ensue in weeks! Tonnes of it!!! 😀
That is a lot of leaves, great job! I have maybe 2 deciduous trees here and would like some Oak leaves to compost so will be off I to town this week garbage bags, rake and leave picker uppers in tow! I susally go to random strangers homes and ask to raid their gutters, no one has said no as yet!
Sue, would you like some used feed bags instead of plastic garbage bags?
Thank you for posting that picture of Ls compost heap. I have been looking for a temporary, yet effective method of making my new heap, and I hadn’t even thought of chicken wire! Inspired once again by your blog 🙂 So jealous of your leaves. Sunny Queensland doesn’t really give us many deciduous leaves to add to my pile.
I’ve done mine in baskets too using a larger square wire. Anything is fine as long as it holds it in place. If you use that really large hole wire then just line it with cardboard which is in itself compostable. If you can’t find enough leaves for carbon then you can use torn up newspaper too. 🙂
That’s brilliant advice, thank you. I can so easily salvage some cardboard from my recycling. Love your blog!
Thank you. 🙂
I’d hit up Dr Google, my favourite source of good advice (and bad too I know) and google composting things like banana leaves and other tropical/semi-tropical plant leaves. I’m sure the rich soils of the tropics that bring so many delicious fruits to our tables must have something to offer a compost heap. 🙂
I just did some research and found banana leaves aren’t so great unless they’re chopped up very small. I found these links though that you might find useful.
http://sarasota.ifas.ufl.edu/compost-info/tutorial/can-i-compost-it.shtml
and
http://rfcarchives.org.au/Next/CaringForTrees/DawnsCompost114-1-00.htm
Let me know how you go. My curiosity has been piqued! 🙂
Excellent job 🙂 You did better than we did. We got home at 2:30am from Gav’s Place 😮 ! It was a struggle to get up on Sunday to help with ATA’s “Speed date a Sustainable Expert” event in the afternoon. Still I think it was a little easier than raking all those leaves.
Yes I heard you were the dirty little stop outs. 😉 Nothing like a great party though with great mates. 🙂
Speed date a sustainable expert? Curiousity piqued. Do tell!
And raking is hard work when you are alone but with a litre of good coffee and great like-minded company it’s a breeze. 😀
here’s a link that explains the concept
http://sdse.ata.org.au/
I was there as a Solar power and energy efficiency expert.
I got up to a lot but as this was weeks ago it hardly bears mentioning 😉 Good to see you raking leaves…(good to see SOMEONE raking leaves 😉 ) Just be careful with those plane tree leaves, they need mulching and they don’t break down for AGES
Thanks for the hint on plane tree leaves. Need to work out who scored them and then add extra fresh manure to try break them down sooner. Now you go rake those oak leaves! 😉
(fingers in my ears)
You know you will regret it if you don’t! 😉
(fingers and a tissue in my ears…)
[…] some rotted manure, lakeweed, leaves and straw. This was from the compost cages I built back when I raked up the park with friends. My mate S from Ballarat often brings me down a trailer or ute-load of manure and/or […]