We're getting to that time of year where we're thinking at least about what to do with the garden as you move into fall and certainly as you move into winter.

And if you're in an area that gets a ton of fall leaves,

I myself am not, and I'm quite jealous about that.

But if you are, there's an abundant resource quite literally

falling on your head that you should be taking advantage of.

It is the best time of year to do this, bar none, to create one of the best types of compost

you'll ever get, and that would be your leaf compost

also known as leaf mold. So if you've done any composting at home you know that

most of the time it's kitchen waste that's what's going into your system.

So for me that's a lot of what I have and I'm using worm composting to deal with that because there's a lot of

nitrogen in there and worms don't necessarily need a very specific

carbon to nitrogen ratio. We're not trying to hot compost in our worm bin so they'll make their way through

more or less whatever I put in there as long as I don't rot it out by putting way

too much in at once.

Now let's take a little bit of a right turn and talk about why you would want to compost

leaves.

Well, honestly, it is kind of like throwing away money if you decide to bag up your leaves and let the green waste company come over and haul it away. I would say the estimated value of leaves it seems like this is the just a

consensus out of Penn State extension is that one mature tree is worth about

$50 in fertilizer and humus or just broken down organic matter.

So as a gardener, that's just not really the best use of our time.

If we can avoid buying store-bought fertilizers because we have an abundance of fall leaves, then let's go ahead and do that.

Now, another good reason is it just simply is a great way to collect your browns.

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