This fall, put yard waste to work

By C.W. Cameron

For the AJC


These rainy days and cooler nights are definitely putting me in a fall frame of mind.

Enlarge photo

Phil Skinner pskinner@ajc.com Canton Master Gardener Billie Davis uses a two-compartment leaf composting bin. Fresh waste is put in the far side and gets transferred to the other as it decomposes. She then uses the finished compost around her plants.

Phil Skinner, pskinner@ajc.com In addition to food scraps and yard waste Canton gardener Lois Andresen adds shreaded paper to her compost bins. The worms are kept in compost and food scraps between layers of newspaper inside the mesh.

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Soon the ground will be carpeted with colorful leaves. And a carpet of leaves means thousands of bags sitting by the curbside waiting for pickup.

What about using those leaves for compost instead?

Look at the example of Cherokee County Master Gardener Billie Davis of Canton who’s been making compost the easy way for 15 years.

Her compost bin measures about 10 feet square, divided in two.

In one side, Davis puts down a layer of leaves, and when she has kitchen or garden waste, digs a hole, puts in the waste and covers it with leaves and some soil she digs up from beneath the leaves.

After awhile, she takes a pitchfork and turns the contents into the other side, then starts again. She lets weather and earthworms break down the contents until she has compost to use as mulch in her vegetable and flower beds.

DeKalb County Extension Service agent Gary Peiffer offers a slightly more scientific approach to composting.

“You can make a pile of leaves and just leave it there. It’s going to break down anyway; but if you make sure it gets moisture, build it in the right way and spend a little time turning it, you’ll help the process along,” he said.

As Davis demonstrates, a compost pile can do more than deal with leaves. It also can include “green” materials such as vegetable waste, eggshells and lawn and garden clippings.

“A well-constructed compost pile should be in the sun and be about 3 feet square and tall. First, put down a layer of 6 or 8 inches of green material, and then add a couple of inches of brown material like twigs, straw, hay, dried leaves, even newspaper. Then add a thin layer of soil, which helps introduce microorganisms into your pile. Moisten it just a little, and then continue building up the layers,” Peiffer said.

The key is to build up the right ratio so the pile will start to heat up inside. That’s what breaks down the material quickly. Turn the pile once a month, and the compost should be ready in two to four months.

People sometimes don’t want to compost because they think it’s going to smell or attract critters, Peiffer said.

“A lot of that relates to the management of the pile,” he said. “If you don’t want it to smell, don’t keep it too wet and don’t add too much green material like lawn clippings. If you add kitchen waste, bury it.”

People also can compost without going outside — no turning; no heavy lifting. Everything happens inside a plastic bin.

It’s worm farming, or vermiculture. The worms eat their way through kitchen and yard waste, and the farmer harvests their castings for a gentle fertilizer.

Lois Andresen, like Davis, is a Cherokee County Master Gardener. “Gardeners are always finding worms in their soil,” she said, and when she learned she could harness the energy of worms to recycle her kitchen waste, she was hooked.

Worm farmers can’t just go out and collect earthworms in the garden. “They’re often called night crawlers. They do not like confinement, and they will find any opening and crawl out. Eisinia fetida, red wiggler worms, are the ones you want,” said Andresen, who orders her worms online. They cost about $20 a pound, which is enough for two bins.

Andresen’s worm bins are opaque plastic containers about 18 inches wide and 24 inches long.

She drills holes for drainage along the bottom and holes for aeration around the top, and then she adds a piece of window screening on the bottom, which keeps the worms in and helps later when she’s ready to harvest the worm castings.

The first bedding for the worms is shredded newspaper, slightly dampened. She adds kitchen waste next — anything without salt, grease, oil or animal products. Weeds and grass clippings are fine, but not if they’ve been treated with pesticides.

Being a good worm farmer means keeping an eye out for problems like too much water or infestations of fruit flies and other larger flies that might lay their eggs in the bin. When it’s time to harvest the castings, Andresen pulls everything out using the screen and lays it all on a table. The worms migrate to the bottom, making them easy to find and remove.

The babies and eggs are a little more difficult to see, so Andresen cleans out the castings over the course of a week to get all the worms, babies and eggs.

Then she’s ready to use her castings on houseplants or favored outdoor plantings.