Compost: A Love Affair

I love compost. I love the concept of making something from nothing, creating value from waste. It speaks to the frugal parts of me as well as to my environmental leanings. This weekend we looked at the yard blanketed with the first round of leaves and knew it was time to start mowing and bagging—and in the process, accumulating next year’s compost.

No easy task this year. My husband, Dave, snapped his Achilles tendon in mid-August, and has been down and out for weeks. He is just now getting back on his feet, finally crutch-free with the help of a protective walking boot. We figured he could drive our riding mower and I could handle the rest.

The mower acts like a big vacuum cleaner of sorts, chopping the leaves and grass as it sucks the mixture up into a large basket. As Dave mowed, I went to work raking leaves from the patio and on to the lawn, and setting up my first bag. A few years ago we discovered this simple but ingenious device: a sheet of black plastic that can be rolled into a wide tube and inserted into the bags to prop them open. I highly recommend it. (We purchased it at ACE Hardware in Traverse City a few years ago, I think.)

Happily, Dave also managed to hobble off the mower, slide the heavy basket full of leaves off the rack and hold it up for me so that I could scoop the mixture into the waiting tube. As each bag was filled with a soft mixture of sweet smelling fresh grass and chopped up leaves, it felt like a harvest of sorts. By the end of November, we will fill 40 more bags and also collect three times that many from the village of Northport. Villagers there rake and bag their leaves and set them out on the curb. They are then collected and taken to the town dump. I used to drive up and haul them back in my car. But a few years ago I talked the Department of Public Works guys into hauling the bags to my old garage instead of taking them to the dump. A batch of brownies sweetened the deal, and so every year I make a pilgrimage to the old brick building in Northport with a shoebox full of treats.

I could not function without the leaves. When Upickers visit, they often look around and ask me how the heck I maintain 26 flower beds that cover nearly an acre of land. I tell them that mulching with leaves is the key--and that it can help them in their own gardens too. Getting the mulching done early is important. As soon as I’ve got the beds cleaned up and weeded in early May, I slide the big heavy door open on the old garage and retrieve bag after bag full of leaves. Over the winter, the leaves have already started to break down--especially those with a mixture of "green and brown" in them. I put down a thick layer of leaves between the rows of perennials and tuck them around the base of each plant. It makes everything look nice and also blocks out sunlight and keeps new weed seeds from germinating. That cuts down on my workload while the leaves also help to keep the soil moist.

Best of all, as last year's fall yard waste breaks down, the inherent organic matter enriches the soil. That in turn activates microbes that go to work, churning up the dirt and turning it into rich, loamy matter. In my business, this is known as “good tilth.” I know things are really cooking when I step into the beds, and literally sink by four or five inches. It’s almost as if the earth is calling me to plant myself too.