Fall Leaves – Our Business at City Farmer

Compost making is what we do at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden in Vancouver, and it can’t be stressed enough, that fall leaves are the secret to making good compost at home. Collect enough leaves in bags NOW to last you through the next 12 months. Every time you add food scraps, grass clippings or plant waste to your bin, throw in a few handfuls of leaves. In that way you will have a good carbon/nitrogen ratio and you will get fine compost in 6-8 months.

Chris Olsen of CTV News visited us at our garden and also visited the Vancouver Landfill where they make compost on a large scale.

See his news video on this page.

Fall Leaves

The colours are memorable. But most of us moan about the work of raking fall leaves. It might help to know all the good those leaves can do once they’re collected.

It’s an autumn ritual, the leaves fall and we have to rake them up. There was a time in Vancouver, when you just pushed them into the street and the city took care of them. Not any more.

“They can create a dangerous slippery situation for motorists and cyclists,” explains Lynn Belanger of the city’s transfer and landfill operations.

And they plug storm drains, so now it’s up to homeowners to collect them. Leaves and other yard waste end up at a huge composting centre at the Vancouver landfill.

“First, we grind it up in the grinder [you can see behind me]. We turn the piles periodically then we screen the material then we sell it.”

The city of Vancouver gets 45,000 tons of yard trimmings, an amount the size of a medium sized cruise ship.

That’s a lot of steaming compost. The city sells the finished compost back to residents at a cost of $10 per cubic meter.

But you can make your own, and fall leaves are a “must have” addition to the compost heap.

“You need 50 per cent of leaves or brown material in your compost mix so your compost works properly,” explained Sharon Stark of the Vancouver Demonstration Garden.

Leaves are the solution to the common compost complaint. That’s the bad smell

“That is lack of brown material in the bin usually,” said Stark

It also signals a lack of aeration. This is the only time of year you can get the leaves, so if you are composting, you need to store them for use next year. An extra garbage can is a good spot.

Smaller leaves are best: they compost faster but if you only have large ones Stark recommends running the lawnmower over them a few times to chop them up.

And if you have just a few leaves, you can just spread them around your garden because they’ll help prevent runoff, soil erosion and soil compaction. Then in the spring, you just dig them in.

With a report by CTV British Columbia’s Chris Olsen