I LOVE listening to Mike McGrath! Thanks so much for dedicating your life to helping people take care of their lawns and gardens naturally. You Bet Your Garden radio show is always so informative.
I shred my leaves by putting them in a big pile and running over it with the lawn mower; works great. I also add come grass clippings in with the leaves if I have them. After a while I will add kitchen scraps. Actually, I did that today. The compost has incredible life all throughout it. The worms are so healthy that they move like a bolt of lightning.
@@markw3598 Assuming worms, like anything else, are drawn to the more nutritious (better tasting?) area from the surrounding area? If worm count is a concern, you can always harvest worms yourself and deposit them in your compost area!
This is the best explanation I have seen for composting. I have always been conscious of using my wilted vegetables and coffee grinds. I dont have a bin set up, I just broomed the leaves off the deck in a shady area in a leaf pile and tossed kitchen stuff there. We also used to throw all leaves from the yard in the neighbors yard being that it had been unoccupied for many years. I couldnt bring myself to put them in bags it seemed like such a waste. This confirmed how important those leaves are and I actually had already bought one of those vacuum things for the deck. This video brought all of it together. My pile works but I dont dig it it up to get the soil. I will have to come up with a better way to get my goodies.
Wonderful!!! So much information, in such little time. He said exactly what I was hoping to hear. It makes sense and takes a lot of work and expense out of what should be a simple process. Wonderful presenter too, he sounds like my best college prof's. Loved those people.
Joel, This presentation is just as OUTSTANDING and informative now as the one you held in OKC back in January 2018. I started my own after attending it, and GREATLY appreciate your expidicious responses to my Q&A emails!!!
I do hundreds of pounds of composting a year, and it all includes the correct kitchen scraps, which in turn decompose just fine and add vital Nitrogen to the mix. Leaves are an important part of composting (Carbon), but just one part. Your kitchen scraps are a lot better in your compost pile/bin then a public landfill.
+Lee Forex No difference really except the length of time it takes for one method to work over another and the amount of work required to maintain the different methods. Compost piles require turning, watering, adding the right mix of carbon and nitrogen, and eventually spreading.. Tumblers require turning, monitoring, emptying, spreading etc and take a long time. Worm farms require work also. And try lifting one of those heavy trays when they are full of composted dirt. Too heavy for many people plus you cannot put just anything in a worm farm or you can kill your worms. Mind you the soldier flies will do this but they are more efficient than worms anyway. Lots of choices out there really. I personally find the compot the best . But I am bias of course, however in my years of experimenting I have found it more efficient than most composter on the market. Just depends what you want to achieve.
+Andy Grayman Still I prefer using vermicomposting to get rid of kitchen waste instead of classic composting: it is far harder to get the proportions of C:N right with scraps, it encourages pests and creates storage problems. I would say put only plant residues in the compost pile, leave the food scraps to the worms and cooked food and meat to a Bokashi digester.
Michał Malinowski Totally agree with you Michal about the classic composting method - getting the C;N ratio right etc. But still OK for plant residue. However I have found that spreading your plant residue around your garden beds is more efficient than piling it all in a big heap. It takes up less space, decomposes quickly and doesn't then need to be spread. Plus it covers & protects your soil and helps retain the moisture in your soil. Much like a chop and drop method but if you are in a city garden, chop and drop looks messy unless you mulch the plant waste which to me is the best idea. As for food scraps there are many options that all require a degree of work including the Bokashi. You still have to bury the Bokashi waste and therefore dig a hole every time you want to dispose of your Bokashi waste. I tell people to get a Compot if they have a Bokashi so they don't have to keep digging that hole. But then why bother with the Bokashi you may ask. Just personal choice really. Everyone likes to do something different and they just like their way. As long as people are doing something it is better then sending it off to the council tips.
We piled up kitchen scraps and whatever lawn waste we gathered up and created a huge compost pile. We never turned it. In spring it had beautiful LEAF MOLD. That put in the ground with transplants made the transplants grow bigger than the labels said!
I'll save you 18 minutes. He states: use a mulcher and shred your leaves before adding them to your compost pile. Don't put "kitchen scraps" in with your compost, just shredded leaves... End.
Rockmonanov Depends. If you want something with little nutrient value, but that will make any easily worked top dressing, just make the leaves into the biggest pile you can and then leave it for a year or so. If you want to make a compost with a higher nutrient value, chuck everything in except the leaves and give everything a good soak. And then give it another soaking because compost heaps can always do with some extra water. Whenever possible, piddle in a bucket, top the bucket up with water and add that to the compost. Then, when there isn't much else going on in the garden, turn the heap over and let some air in.
+fred. I raked a giant pile into a low part of my backyard and left it there. My better half asked me if I was ever going to finish removing the leaf pile. I told her no. I'm making fill for the low spot. She thought I was crazy until I spread it out almost a year later. The grass is thicker there and the water doesn't puddle like it used to
"Well, you run the scraps through the chickens first". I've also heard that you can substantially reduce your heating bill by keeping 50 chickens in your basement. Win, Win, Win. Get rid of your scraps, heat your house, fertilze your garden.
Mike Mcgrath is the goto guy when it comes to gardening. I listen to him on the radio and have changed my opinion on composting, wood chips and many other things.
I built my home in 1972 which had a large yard. That was the thing--a big yard. I sowed it with rye and blue grass. But the soil had been abused for many years that crab grass, crowsfoot, and buckhorn was what grew best. About 20 years later, and after reading a book on soil, I decided to plow it under, then ran a garden tiller over it. When the old soil drys out in summer, it gets hard as a rock. But before I tilled it, I contacted a lawn service, and asked him to dump all of his leaves and grass clippings on my plowed and spaded up lawn. Then in the autumn, I drove over town begging people for their leaves. The more, the better. Finally, I tilled all the leaves and grass into the soil. I let it winter over. Come Spring, no leaves; just black soil. Then I sowed blue grass. The best blue grass I had ever seen. Though I prefer to sow grass seed in late Sept. as the cooler weather and the angle of the sun's rays promote blue grass growth while the junk grass and weed die out.
You're on the right track; the other thing to learn is to not till your soil. Just continue to add mulch/organic matter, and you'll continue increasing the fertility.
Rffinkle I like to just add mulch/organic matter on top of the soil of my trees, but I wonder if I it benefit them a lot.. I mean I do not care if this process is 60% or even 50% efficient .. because it is convenient.. do you know how efficient it is? like if it is 20% it is poor practice and take forever to improve it.. thanks
Everything mentioned about composting and mulching is 100 % correct. As a science teacher of biology and chemistry for 38 years, I find this video to be the most ecologically correct statement about mulching and composting I have ever come across. The aim of the humor in this video is right on target and I am especially appreciative of the knock at Al Gore. BTW, shredding the leaves allows for more rapid decomposition of leaves. The reason is that shredding increases the surface area of the vegetation acted upon by the digestive enzymes released microbes. In addition to the soil nutrients found in it, the use of coffee grounds also adds to the aeration of the composing pile due to the coarseness of the grounds.
Perhaps you then can answer my question. What do you think of adding human waste via a composting toilet to your leaves and then to your vegetable garden? I have read very different opinions on this. I'm thinking of getting a composting toilet for off grid living but i'll want to use that waste to grow food. Some opinions say to Only use it for flower gardens. Your thoughts?
Compost it the way way you would with animal manure. I would not use that composted material in any garden or place you would grow food. The reason is fear of potential transmission of diseases via food grown using composted human manure. There is a difference in the chemical make-up of manures and urine from herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Manure from herbivores is more plant friendly. A problem with animal manures is they tend to attract flies which is usually not a problem from composted vegetation. Urine from herbivores is somewhat basic(alkaline) while the urine of humans is on the acidic side of pH. Most plants we grow for food prefer soil that is slightly alkaline.That is why we place lime on our lawns and in our gardens. Lime raises the pH of soils that are acidic.
Would that mean to put the leaves outside in the weather? Does it have to be a hot process, meaning I have to put the leaves in a closed container? Thanks and I appreciate your answer.
Even though Mike Mcgrath may have not covered all the facts on composting, I think he is an excellent speaker and found his talk funny and engaging. Good job!
I really enjoyed this video. I've been a leaf "hoarder" for the past few years and just love what it's done for my garden beds. And yes--I compost my food wastes as well, but I do have separate piles. I think there's a lot of different methods and you just have to decide what YOU like and what you think works best for you. Happy Gardening! :)
+Susan Schmitz I'm just like you, I try to put as many leaves as I can into my garden and when the trees are bare till them under if the garden isn't to wet. We all don't have to be perfect all of the time, but all of us just do a little something as often as possible.
Splendid Message. What a splendorous wealth given free by nature. The Best Things in life are Free. Only we need the wisdom to see it and enjoy. Cheers. Raman
I really liked this video. I have started composting all my neighborhood’s leaves, and the results have been amazing! In regards to my kitchen scraps, I just dig out trenches and bury them. That’s it no smell, no mess, no problem!
Forget the leaf blower, use the bagged lawn mower! Suck up the leaves in the bag, dump in a pile. Then without the bag run over the pile multiple times until not much is left. I use a shady spot as a fungal compost pile. Once compost develops you just grind more on the surface, it decomposes in weeks and the ground is teeming with earthworms. Every thing from leaves to branches run through the chipper goes in there. The variety of mushrooms growing in the area is incredible. Have not thrown out a single leaf since 1983. Before that mom would bag and throw out everything picked from the yard. Plants often looked sickly. Now everything grows like weeds and there are no weeds either!
That was the most helpful and informative info I have heard. I am just in the beginning stages of a Back to Eden Garden. I now realize that I should keep not only a compost pile but a worm bin. I am so looking forward to both. thanks you Mike McGrath
I see him just stating things without truly explaining them. He doesn't really tell you WHY kitchen scraps shouldn't be used, he sort of just asserts it as true.
Actually he DID explain why you should NEVER put kitchen waste in your LEAF compost! He said it is COLD, because it LACKS NITROGEN! Sadly, there is a limited amount of time allowed for speeches. Perhaps you can take away the biggest part of his talk, then simply GOOGLE what YOU THINK the speaker short changed you on! Personally, I think he did a damn good job "pulling me in" on a subject I was not even looking for, held my attention on an otherwise boring (to me) topic and CLEARLY educated me more than others! If you THINK you are so entitled to ALL information for FREE - take the HINT from the speaker as a catalyst and launch pad to DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!!!
@@idontdogmail1669 Well-said. This remarkable video led me to further exploration into composting in general. I've watched it over and over, and am a bit more able to parse the distinctions among compost processes and types. From what I gather, Mike is trying to encourage folks to start composting, and to use the common resource of autumn leaves. Leaf mold and hot compost are cousins. Each uses a process that differs in bacteria vs fungi dominance. One requires aeration while the other uses a fungal mechanism to get oxygen by breaking water molecules. At least that is my understanding. If that is wrong, I'd welcome thoughtful correction. Ive been hot-composting shredded hardwood leaves for 3 years now, thanks to Mike and the poster of this video. Last autumn I started a leaf mold corral, avoiding oak and favoring maple, apple, hickory, cherry leaves, since the oak leaves take me quite a while to decompose, despite careful monitoring, turning, plenty of coffee grounds etc.
Loved your video. Years ago I had 2 oak trees, rake the leaves into a pile and tossed some cantaloupe seeds. Did nothing else, went to bag them and found cantaloupes growing wild in the pile. Been composting leaves and coffee ever since. Works great for my fruit trees.
I mix everything, kitchen waste, leaves and grass from my lawn. Everything composts perfectly. As long as you don't put any meat or animal fat you won't have any problem composting your kitchen waste
I agree. It's good to compost kitchen scraps because the more people that do that, the more nutrients are added back to the earth where they count, instead of being hidden away with the garbage.
Exactly. I have a compost "bin" made out of wooden pallets (aprox. 3 feet on each side) and it's in my backyard, directly on the ground. Air, moisture and insects take care of everything i throw there and it only takes them a few months. Absolutely no problem. Just throw garbage on the upside and get compost from the lower part. This guy is completely wrong on what he says
Compost is amazing stuff, it not only provides people like myself with a great hobby, not only helps grow things really really well, but compost can also teach you a lot about life and death, and how death is as much a part of the natrual cycle as life is :)
I moved into a new home a few years ago and have a beautiful red maple in my yard. When I first saw the tree flush out new growth in the spring, I could tell that it was deficient in nutrients due to the coloring of the leaves. Ever since I moved in, every year when the leaves fall I rake them along the base and out to the drip line of the tree, then run over them with my lawn mower to shred them. The tree looks healthy and beautiful.
The truth. I do the same thing, leaves and grass mulch in the fall, red worms all year round with kitchen scraps. It is magical. I never thought about repurposing the tomato cages in the winter, heck you could put that pile right on top of your raised bed and spread it out in the spring. So simple. You don't grow plants, you grow soil and the plants grow themselves. Lastly that part about no weeds can't be said enough.
Many types of "weeds" actually are good for the soil. They have deep tap roots that pull up micro-nutrients deep in the soil that garden plant roots can't normally reach. When the those weeds are composted/or die and lie of the ground and brake down they contribute those nutrients to the upper soil levels for new plants to use in the future.
I hate that I've been doing wrong all these years, but my frustration with my lack of results is what brought me here; so the flip side is that I'm very happy for this information and intend on doing it right from now on. Thank you, Mr. McGrath!
Mike McGrath seems to have a problem with his facts. Composting is not an imitation of nature. Cold composting is. Hot composting is a far different process and is not normally a naturally occurring thing. Kitchen waste can be composted and does in fact make excellent compost. Leaves falling in the woods and breaking down is fine and dandy if you have decades to wait.....which at my age I do not. I feel Mike would do better encouraging all varieties of composting rather than discounting them in favor of one style.
You make a good point. I think many gardeners get caught in their particular style to the exclusion of all else. I mean, just look at how many useful ways there are to grow a garden: square foot, deep mulch, green manuring with tillage, hugelkultur, forest gardening, double-digging biointensive, container gardening, irrigation-free wide rows, mound gardening, sunken beds, aquaponic... it's ridiculous. You'll find people using each method and swearing it's the best while simultaneously disparaging all other approaches. Climates differ, soils differ, approaches differ and people differ. With presentations like this one, it's worth simply absorbing the good info and passing on the rest.
Agreed. I work with two kinds of compost. I compost 30:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio for hot compost. I have a separate bin of mostly dried leaves, sticks, wood chips etc for primarily fungal decomposition. I only use the carbon heavy cold compost when making aerated compost tea.
luc07ry Right on. Different composts for different applications. There's definitely a difference between bacterially dominated and fungally dominated compost. Brush piles turn into great stuff if you have patience... if you don't, I've just gone and thrown weeds, straw and chicken manure into a 55 gallon drum, covered that with water, then let it sit in the sun for weeks. I know that's a non-recommended anaerobic method, but it worked wonders in my corn patch.
Yes and no. Most home composting does not get hot enough to be "hot" composting. While some piles may steam or smolder, they are well below the threshold of hot composting. Most home gardeners are doing cold composting whether they know it or not. And I know that piles of leaves, etc that I compost in a bin break down and are useable much faster than piles that include grass and or garbage. And, worm bins work much better on garbage than tossing it in a pile in my back yard. Maybe the solution is two bins --- one for just leaves and one for mixes of various ratio's we often learn about. That way you have both the fungal and bacterial processes at work for you. :)
leaves do compost beautifully and quickly. Shred them and just pile them up..I did not mean to compost but while I piled up shred leaves behind the well house..when I remembered them and was going to burn them...there was the best dark earth..oh there was still some shredded leaves..But most was that dark rich soil.
Great talk. I just harvested my first batch of compost. It was in one of those tumblers. It took 4 years to turn into black gold. I only used kitchen scraps. Its amazing how much food waste shrinks. I have lots of leaves but have not been using them.
I just started composting and this was VERY helpful info! Thank you! I mixed a bunch of yard wast together, including the fallen fruit and flowers from the trees... and some of the stix too. Next time I will be wiser and just make leaf piles, and keep my separate worm bin for food scraps.😉
If you don't need compost try just taking the bag off your lawnmower and mulching the leaves. This fertilizes the lawn and you'd be surprised how little is left visible once the leaves go through a lawnmower.
good point but i advise people to use a dose of common sense - in my 40' wide yard i have 4 fully grown maple trees. maple leaves don't make a nice mulch, ever, as far as the lawn is concerned. better to collect them up and use them in the garden where it won't matter as much if they form mats. i leave my grass clippings in situ but leaves are another beast entirely, unless you have relatively few of them.
Mike doesn't really seem to know what hot compost is. You have to maintain the right carbon to nitrogen ratio, and regularly aerate it. If you do it properly this can lead to dark, rich, fertile compost in an impressively short amount of time. A compost tumbler makes the whole process pretty easy. Hot compost is a controlled process using microorganisms to break down biomatter, and requires maintenance. If you don't wanna mess with all of that though you can always check to see if your city offers a compost pickup service. My town recently started a service where they will pick up your kitchen scraps, which are then used to make municipal compost that is cheaply available to the public. I hear some towns even give away their compost. Mike should be promoting all kinds of composting. I use dried leaves and straw as mulch in my garden which enriches the soil. I "chop and drop" when weeding or pruning to further mulch and enrich the soil. I spread my hot compost, cold compost, and vermicompost on my raised beds in the spring or fall. I bury my bokashi compost in a neglected corner of my yard. The best time to start composting is now, and it's easier than ever.
Great video. We've been composting our leaves and using a wormery for our kitchen waste for years now. Almost effortless. Over the years, we've tried almost all the methods put forth by various experts, but for us, this is the simplest, least space consuming and fastest way - and the only thing we do is chop the leaves and collect the compost in the spring. If you do not have a shredding leaf blower, you can mow your leaves, or even better, put the leaves in a garbage can and use a weed-whacker (strimmer) - gets the leaves so fine it is almost dust. Put a clear garbage bag over it while you work so you don't breath in the dust but can still see what you are doing. Or use a respirator. Craigslist in the fall for clean leaves, and several folks will usually respond. Main thing to remember is to keep the leaves wet/moist - dry leaves will just sit there and do nothing...
This may be good for the incurious who knew nothing about composting before this TEDX talk. However, for anyone willing to do a little work, the Berkley method of hot composting, or having and allowing backyard chickens to process your composting materials for you, are far superior methods. Geoff Lawton is the better composting coach.
This is really good for people who tend to add a cup of fertilizer to a plant when the package says to add a third of a cup (because the more the merrier). By the way, he _does_ add kitchen scraps to _his_ compost piles (he admits to it on his weekly radio show). He doesn' t add clippings because he has a lawn and cares about how it looks.
I agree, Geoff Lawton is a great coach and very knowledgeable. There are those of us that are not in a position to have chickens, or access to the animal waste (manure). For those that can and do, great. For those of us that do not, mike's method will work for almost everybody, unless you live in the A. AA. Mt. Everest and some (not all) desserts.
Good God, America. You don't need electricity for everything! Get a rake and a shovel - you might even be in danger of burning a few calories while you're at it.
I have been putting food scraps and vegetable trimmings, and all sorts of other organic stuff, into my compost for years and it breaks down nicely. Leaves make good compost, but they aren't the only things that do.
The best takeaway from this talk is his point about the STBs (Stupid People Bags). He hits that nail right on the head. Don't buy these things! Mulch those leaves... even if you don't compost, it's still great for your lawn. No leaf blower? Use your lawnmower. Works just as well (esp. if it has a mulching attachment).
I use SPB to store extra leaves in over winter. Will get two years out of them and then used their stained and brittle carcasses as the bottom layer of a pile. I'm the weirdo on the block piling my leaves around the trunks of my trees. flower beds and garlic patch every fall. And yes, I do steal my neighbors filled SPB's from time to time.
Just save your leaves and your lawn clippings in a 50/50 mix.....(mix them or mow them to chop) and lay them out on top of the ground ......(a rototiller would help speed things up). This is called sheet composting and it works wonderfully. Low effort and great results....oh and it mimics mother nature! Hot composting is better if you want to kill bugs or disease but cold composting gets the worms real busy. (just my 2 cents). I'm old and have tried many methods......easy is ALWAYS more doable and productive!
I've been having success with kitchen scraps in my compost, of course having worms and others of the waste management team are really helpful. Love it for having tea for my plants :D
+hypersapien Same here. And as poorly as my first 6 months of composting has gone, getting a massive fire ant colony in my compost bin has been a hidden blessing: everywhere they dig is turned into moist black dirt in a week. Lol as long as I use a long pole and back off when they swarm out of the bin, I have a hyper composting system. Now how to figure out what to do with the ants before I use the dirt.
This is an amazing video and I'm sure this method works extremely well but n Nature has been adding a heck of a lot more to the ground than leaf matter over the last...forever: decaying plants, dead animals and humans, vegetable and fruit matter, faeces of living animals, humans and insects and the countless bodies of insects and arachnids...both ground dwelling, underground dwelling and sky dwelling. It's about layers, moisture and size/heat. the average composting Joe can take note.
Oh wow, so glad I stumbled across this vid... I started gardening in 1992 or so, with no prior experience and no one to mentor me, and I learned everything I needed to know from Organic Gardening magazine. Mike's writing and leadership style were so kind and positive... after he left OG the mag's style became so dry and dull I canceled my subscription and never went back. Those years that I did have with OG were WONDERFUL, though, and I'm so very thankful. I can't wait to watch this vid.
+maxdecphoenix He only made the comments about kitchen waste because a lot of people have no idea about carbon and nitrogen. This video is more about composting for beginners.
+Liberty Garden i know right? this is actually disinfo -- like you can put kitchen waste as long as you balance it with browns....its actually better with kitchen waste because you get a wider range of nutrients and microorganisms to add to your soil. this guy is wrong, straight up
I live in the Pacific North West. Every fall I put the leaves on my tiny garden plot, I get a good 12 to 18 inches of leaves. I sprinkle some shovelfuls of dirt on top and rake it in. By the time the spring rolls around the leaves are pretty much all turned to soil. The leaves also help prevent the soil nutrients from being washed away in the long rainy season. This probably wouldn't work in colder climates, but the days frequently get warm enough in the winter in the PNW to allow the leaves to compost without being in a huge pile. I put my kitchen waste into a large Tupperware tub (with a few small holes drilled in the bottom and kept outside). This is a worm farm. The worms eat the kitchen scraps and turn it into soil. When it's half full of soil (worm casings) I put half of the soil into the garden and keep adding kitchen scraps to the Tupperware container.
Compost happens. Using Bokashi composting methods, I have composted thousands of pounds of food waste over this past year, most of it being in the driest parts of the summer here in Southern California. A lot of it was fish carcasses and innards from a local fish market. I did it in my front yard and most of it was complete from restaurant/kitchen food waste to compost in less than six weeks. I also had 15 full loads of arborist's tree trim mulch dropped into my front yard 1 this spring and summer. The shredded leaf material is still in piles. But the mixed material with all the food waste is part of my greenhouse potting mix and growing thousands of seedlings as write this comment. So while this guys talk was funny and entertaining, it says nothing of the millions of tons of food waste and compostable materials that fill our landfills each year. Wait, NO... it does say something It says send it away and keep the leaves. Sorry but I call BS!
It's true. Growing up in Michigan, we composted the neighbors' maple leaves that blanketed our own treeless yard. My dad and I had some crazy big gardens going, and needed the compost anyways, so despite grumbles, it worked out. Over maybe 10 years, we turned nearly solid clay soils (from when the basement was dug) into the most beautiful crumbly loamy soil that I still get wistful thinking about it, here in the sandy wastes of Florida. And our compost was nearly 100% leaves.
Nah, good nitrogen there, especially makes good compost starter. Of course, over-doing it will affect the bacterial action and worms negatively. I'm not really sure how much it would take to do that; you're probably fine.
I do that also. But during the growing season most of the pee is put into bottles and let sit for 2 to 3 days. Then dumped out in numberous spots around the garden. Aging it brings out a stronger ammonia smell that rabbits and deer seem to dislike and they stay away from the garden. Male pee seems to work better than female for this. But skunks don't seem to mind it, especially when the sweet corn is starting to ripen ;-( Tip; use the large mouthed bottles from sports drinks, they are easier to fill than small mouthed water or pop bottles ;-) I can't confirm or deny it, but I have read that aged pee is better than fresh for the compost pile.
and if you don't have a balanced lawn, you will kill it by leaving all the grass clippings on it, it will mulch your lawn because the soil does not have enough carbon to break down the clippings. just like when people try to clean up all the fall leaves with their lawnmower. it just chops them up till they are too small for the mower to pick up. then it smothers the lawn to death. Either way, stop planting lawns, they are a waste of time, water and soil.
Just so everyone knows, here in the Southern US, Live Oaks (one of the most abundantly grown trees) drop their copious amounts of leaves in the Spring! They keep them all Winter, and just before the new leaves appear, they drop the old ones. In Central FL, where I live, this occurs in mid to late February. Just in time for Spring planting! And despite claims I've heard to the contrary, they make wonderful compost, shredded or not.
Brilliant talk! I learned about spent coffee grounds some years ago from an old gaffer gardener at a local event that preaches the gospel of composting. It's good to hear you mention it again and I'm now determined to go to my local coffee shop and ask for their spent grounds :-) Thank you for a thoroughly enjoyable, humourous (oops! I must be British because I put a 'u' in humourous!) and very, very informative talk. Oh, and you're right about European children speaking multiple languages, too - the Brits are almost as bad as the Yanks in the foreign language department - they just expect the rest of the world to speak English!
Some good tips, some horse shit too. Composting everything is a good idea, not just what composts fast. Not all compost is created equal and getting something good and fast does require metering what goes in (accelerants), but it also requires diversity (nutrient and potential energy), and tactics (expansion and heat management). Coffee grounds are good, but fish guts are even better. Leaves and guts can help make better compost of bone and paper, but it doesn't constitute all that is good about compost. Here is a person, for lack of effort and foresight, congratulates himself for horticultural living and then advocates for more dumpster filling of what he correctly points out as having a long biodegradable half-life. It's lazy composting and imo results in lower quantities of deader dirt.
As we compost in our piles, we alternate put dry leaves and kitchen waste with adding buttermilk and cowdung for bettre microbs and its activity as its a aerobic compost .its a excellent highly nutritive fertilizer for our plants and hotriculture.
I'm studying horticultural science at university, you can compost just about anything organic based. It all comes down to method. Mike is spouting out common knowledge that you will find in just about any 'how to compost' book. Nothing new here. Mike is also talking about making a leaf mould, which is not very nutrient rich (although it adds structure to compost), and being carbon rich, can take a long time to break down. Kitchen waste can be nitrogen rich, it all depends on what it is - like vegetable and fruit peelings. Leaves don't have to be shredded, but can easily be done so using a lawn mower (just leave the leaves on the ground and run over them, your catcher attachment on the lawn mower will do the rest). Composting is easy. For the beginner, a 50:50 volume split of browns (carbon - leaves, cardboard, acid free paper, untreated paper based cat litter) and greens (kitchen waste, animal feces, grass clippings) is ideal using the hot composting method (which requires the pile to be at least 1 meter high, wide and deep - size does matter). You can also use a hot composting bin like a green johanna or a bokashi bin if you don't have space for a pile. Bokashi bins are great because you can just about anything organic in it (including meat, bones and animal waste). You can compost cat and dog feces using the hot composting method, the hot composting method kills most harmful bacteria - however its a good idea not use feces that have come from unwell animals. The pile needs to be turned once in a while to maintain it oxygen, and needs to be as moist as a well wrung out sponge (damp), this helps the good bacteria break down your pile and encourages worms (make sure that bottom of your pile or bin is exposed to the ground otherwise the good guys can't come in and lend a hand). Make sure that your pile is covered with something like a tarp or old organic based carpet eg; wool. This will help maintain the heat and keep out excess moisture (and animals).
Laura thanks for your detail post, though it is 5 years later. a question, if I throw my scraps fruit peel, egg shell in small pieces directly on the soil under my trees how efficient it is , 50% or 60% if so it is the easiest way.. or do I get very very little nutrients, I have never found study on that. thanks again for your post.
I liked this video, but leaves are carbon, what about nitrogen? If threes produce leaves and they are incorporated in soil, trees and bushes also produce fruits and vegetables, like apples, bananas, figs, berries, potatoes, eggplants and etc. and if we do not pick them, they also fall like leaves and are incorporated into the soil, so what about if I have left clean organic pulp after juicing or nice peels, not a garbage but peels which by nature's law also fall and become soil, that is not a garbage, that is also natural nitrogen source, why do I have to throw that away? I think nitrogen carbon mixture will work even better like John does at "Learn Organic Gardening at GrowingYourGreens" and also adds rock trace minerals and worm castings.
I just found a Q&A where Mike McGrath contradicts everything he said in the video and admits to using "every scrap of [his] kitchen waste". I think he just needed a hook to get people to watch his Ted Talk and buy his book. "Everything You Know About Composting Is Wrong" seems to be working pretty well. www.gardensalive.com/product/composting-kitchen-waste-can-be-tricky/you_bet_your_garden
kitchen scraps vary a lot depending on what it is and where it was grown but they generally do contain enough nitrogen to break down high carbon materials such as leafs faster than they would decompose on their own. I've built tons of compost of high quality with wood chips and food scraps. With high lignin materials like leaves or wood chips its important to make sure the entire pile is wet, not soggy but wet. Leaf mold is very valuable with nothing else added. It is very mineral rich and it also attracts beneficial fungi. The fungi are needed to complete the composting process and incorporate the leaves into the soil. A soil rich in fungi is best for most crops. The cabbage family and beet family like soil more dominated by friendly bacteria.
my interpretaciónof kitchen garbage - cooked food left overs, ie. hamburgerhelper, mac and cheese, lunch meats, pizza crusts, potato chips. whatever processed food you don't want to eat.
Winter is coming. Mike McGrath I have loved your essays and articles and they have sustained me for years. OG Mag has never been the same without you. Your irreverence and snarkiness is spot on. Nature is irreverent and snarky. Anyone complaining below please, get off the cross ... we need the wood for a Autumn Equinox bonfire and pagan ritual. I don't use a blower/sucker but I have been known to stick my weed whacker in a trash can to shred leaves up. Takes about 15 seconds. There is no one right way to compost. I mix my shredded leaves with kitchen waste (Sorry Mike, let's agree to disagree on this - it's just easier for me and it works) and coffee grounds I scrounge and then, as necessary (using the smell and eyeball test) tweak as necessary. That can mean adding more "brown" (leaves and dried grass) or more "green" (kitchen waste or grounds). And yes, I pee on my pile and occasionally add the dried blood of my enemies (or blood meal from Home Despot) to get it to the point where it smells like puppy breath. When it reaches 150 degrees I do the compost dance as it's killing all the viruses and weed seeds. I can turn a pile of leaves and garbage into compost in three weeks all year. Sometimes just for ducks I throw some worm castings into a "cool" pile/bin and in a few days I get a red wriggler worms so I have some vermiculture going on and commence to keep it fed with mostly kitchen scraps. I keep the bin very high so if it does heat up the worms can escape to the cool nether regions. In short, find free compostables and work with that. Every neighborhood has at least one and usually three or four good free sources be that coffee grounds, tree service mulch, dried kelp, horse, llama, chicken poo, or as Mike suggests, your dumb neighbors leaves and lawn clippings. Be careful to not bring in toxic stuff that's been poisoned with chemical fertilizers and herbicides. (Out here our community compost got f'ed up horribly when clueless folks disposed of plant matter killed with herbicides and the compost now kills everything.. I'm glaring at you Monsanto!!! Better yet, I'm supporting the huge boycott of each and every one of your evil products..) Take a class or read a book and be prepared to discard 90% of what you hear and just go your own way. Make mistakes, fix them, learn ... teach. Best thing we can all do is get people to join us in composting and usually they need a little push. For us, people see my incredibly healthy garden and then they ask why my gardens are so lovely I take them right to the compost and say it all happens here. And did I tell you Winter is coming?
+Randy Baker Thank You. Old post I know but nice to hear a balanced, rational (mostly sane ;) response. I don't understand how people feel that if someone has a different opinion than they do they have a right to ridicule, resort to name calling, etc. Take it with a grain of salt. I learned a few things from this talk, which was helpful, and if there were a few things I didn't agree with then I can throw them on the compost pile with my kitchen scraps. I can still appreciate the person and his effort to educate and encourage more people to use leaves for compost.
+Anne Lilley Thank you, Anne. My grandpa used to quote Mark Twain: Don't argue with fools, bystanders may not be able to tell the difference. I may have scrambled that but I think the point is sound. The really beautiful thing about compost is that it's so darn forgiving! Speaking of in/sanity, my buddy was recently weed whacking some brush on his property and got into a couple patches of Jimson Weed. Apparently the whacker atomized some of the powerful alkaloids in the plant and he breathed it in. I'm told 20 minutes later his pupils were the size of dimes and he was starting to hallucinate mildly. His wife called me over and once I saw what had happened I got him settled down, put some music on and sat with him for about 90 minutes during which he settled back down. Point being we have so much to learn from each other, why criticize at all. As you say lets all just take what we like and leave the rest.
Great stuff. I used to have to ask my kids if they'd be embarrassed if I grabbed the leaf bags and grass bags from various houses on the way back home; they never said they had a problem with it. After a year I had neighbors coming by almost daily to fill a couple 5gl buckets of compost from the backyard for their gardens.
I cannot thank the trump, (donald the quack as I refer to this major threat to our society) seeing he would and will if he could repeal the First Amendment. As there may be children that do not need to hear the foul language I am reading and also those of us that firmly believe that a point can be made without foul words. Now for my point. I am 60 years old and consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about composting, but I am not so old that I cannot learn something new to me. I do not know whether to be glad or sad that Andrew A. thinks he knows everything there is to know about composting. I am sad that he feels that he has to use foul words to let us know that he feels that those of us that are willing to learn something new or different are inferior to him.
Problem is new houses in America do not have yards any more. This disgusts me. I want my yard. Both parents are supposed to work now days, so who is going to the gardening anymore. Not even any time to train the children anymore.
The idea behind adding your "kitchen garbage" (basically food scraps) to your compost is that you're not adding it to your trash (creating more waste that goes into landfills) or wasting it by washing it down the drain via the disposal. I compost everything... egg shells, coffee grounds, fruit & veggie scraps, even pasta and meat (but no bones). As long as you mix in enough browns with it (dried leaves & grass, paper, cardboard, etc.), it will break down into the most rich soil you've ever seen. But you have to turn it often (I use a pitchfork) and keep it moist. His point about breaking down the leaves before adding it is a good one and will help speed the process, but even that isn't crucial as long as you keep it aerated and moist.
this guy belongs on a street corner, or harassing lawn & garden employees, not on a TED talk. this is one place where the commenters are a better resource than the speaker.
If he's been writing about green to brown ratios, aerobic bacteria, beneficial decomposers, humates, fast vs slow compost, double digging, indigenous microorganisms, fermented plant juice rock dust & nutrient availability, so be it, everything I know must be wrong. I just need "leaves".
I think his point is that people throw away the most beneficial things for their lawns and gardens and go spend money and effort on all this junk. I recycle all of the yard waste back into my gardens.
Billdo O'Reilly True, his point is, leaves are valuable, especially if they are dried and who has time to stir the heat to the outside and colder to the center. Once people start ragging here, they all do. Sheep. I'd like to see them make a video and keep it dull and see who likes it. lol Many people don't get it that you make TWO things: Carbon and Nitrogen. I doubt you wanna make the organic tea with using carbon and worms....you need mostly the nitrogen and less of the carbon.
Yea, now you have the right idea, and don't let the pile dry out. If I'm out watering the lawn or garden, I always go to the compost pile and shoot some water down into the pile so it is wet at least a foot down in the pile, and that isn't hard to do while I'm communing with nature. Don't have a bunch of anything in one place, spread it out. Spread the joy and layer.
@AnusiaLA: Mow up the pine needles, along with the top of the grass, using your mower's grass catching bag. That will chop the needles somewhat. Dump it somewhere to compost. The grass clippings will help. You can also add coffee grounds and stir them in.
We compost our leaves in the fall covering them with black lumber wrap in the spring. The past 3 years using only coffee grounds as an addition we have harvested 40 to 50 wheelbarrows of great soil each fall within 1 year of the start.
His main argument is that everything _most of_ your plants need in terms of food can be found in the leaf of a deciduous leaf that came down in the cool of autumn. If you can break that leaf down to a form that doesn't stop water and air and water from reaching the roots of your plant, then you are in business. In that sense, you don't really _need_ to add kitchens scraps and grass clipping to your compost pile. He says not to do that for a good reason. The grass clippings from _his_ lawn stay on his lawn (because he cares about his lawn) but he does add some kitchen scraps to his piles; he says not to because people tend to add too many and the wrong kind. He does a radio show where there are guests of his (who he respects) who add just about everything to their compost piles. He understands there are many ways to go about doing this. The first compost pile I attempted was a complete failure because I made the mistakes he's trying to caution against. I recommend his show. I wouldn't have wasted my summer if I had listened to it. You don't have to do everything he says. I throw my kitchen scraps in my worm bin because I place more value on castings than compost but I add "clippings" because they really heat up the pile and I don't care about a nice neat looking lawn.
Yeah me too, I'm not really a compost person much at all, attracts far too many pests for certain use; castings however I agree are great and also deter pests :) However, there are still some fundamentals to a balanced compost and they don't include stuff like grass (which are also probably full of grass and weed seed). I'm not hating, just wouldnt let him tend my own garden ;)
GREAT VIDEO!.And if your Ash tree is treated against EAB, compost those leaves separately and utilize it as mulch in the spring to help feed & heal your tree. Make a video on how to properly apply wood or bark mulch around the base of trees since people are killing them by improperly volcano mulching.
Speak English? Barely? You can speak it barely? Start by rhyming compost with lost not with toast! It's not 'oh' because it contains the word post. How do you pronounce impostor? Does it rhyme with toaster? ;-) (Yes, its a smiley. I am posting light heartedly to make you smile, so please don't become outraged and indignant. The joke was originally made during the lecture.)
I'm not becoming outraged, however you are simply uninformed. It actually IS pronounced with an 'oh' sound. Not 'lost' sound. See the definition: Compost -ˈkämˌpōst/ Sound link: ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sounds/de/0/compost.mp3
bugs181 Sorry, I don't want this to get to be a big issue so I'll try to be brief. You deserve a reply but it will be final. You're missing the point totally! I posted a poor little joke which was based around the fact that we speak differently. You have obviously interpreted that as "Yank bashing by a limey". It wasn't. Fragile ego again. You're recording of "Kahmpohst" is as wrong as the original speaker above, that is to most of the people who live in "Otherworld"! In English it rhymes with lost, while Americans prefer to rhyme it with toast. It must rank alongside other linguistic monstrosities like "omg" and "the thing about that is is that..." and everything being "like". "England and America are two countries divided by a common language". (It was a Brit who wrote that). You're recording is obviously from an American source. I could produce just as many as yourself speaking English and rhyming with from and lost. As such it may well be considered absolutely correct - in America where you speak American! But that doesn't make it universally right, it's wrong if we are talking about English! I suggest we start to accept that, for your own reasons of identity and control, you have bent the English language so far away from its original form without even knowing why it was the way it was in the first place, (all of those "irrelevant" silent letters for example), that you have a new language of your own. Stand up and applaud that and call it American. I do. Now let's get back to important things like how to make better kahmpoast. :-)
Albert Burton Thank you for the reply. Additionally, thank you for being reserved and not coming right out and calling me an idiot. It seems to be the theme these days rather than invoking a good conversation. Also, please note that I wasn't insulted or otherwise. I was wishing to enlighten you. But as it seems, the tables have turned. I don't have a fragile ego and will admit that I'm wrong. I do recognize the fact that most Brits and English speakers vary so widely, that there's even a Stack Exchange forum for these types of discussions. One such example is how Americans pronounce "solder" with an "odder" sound, while most Brits will say they pronounce with an "older" sound. I wasn't aware that there was more than one pronunciation of "compost" though. One thing we can both agree upon is the fact that the new generation of Americans have butchered the English language so much, that it sounds awful. I will always mispronounce a few words though, just because of being raised with a grass-roots in the pronounciation of certain words. If it's worth anything, I've always pronounced the word "solder" correctly and get odd looks most the time. I appreciate you taking the time to correct me. The true topic at hand is much more fascinating anyway! :D
Hellfirejuddy Thanks for taking the time to post. In most our country's culture, I feel that we've all lost something along the way. Why is it so difficult for this generation to show one another respect? It's not that difficult to have a good debate, conversation, or understanding. I too am tired of seeing the same old jabs and insults. Nothing productive ever comes of it, so why even bother? If people don't agree with something and have nothing productive to add to the conversation then just move along. The "thongs" reference brings up an interesting topic in it's own right. Across most of America, thongs can definitely be used to refer to a type of underwear. Why I find it interesting is because "hicks" of some midwestern (states) culture, we also refer to flip-flops as thongs, however most Americans would look at us oddly. It now makes me curious if the "modern" culture has caused a shift in the word "thongs" because it's usually the cultures with less education that refer to "thongs" as footwear. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the "hick" culture in America but I'd be happy to enlighten you on the topic. I came from a poor-ish family that are referred to as hicks. I then moved to the west coast and obtained a college degree. My english never really fit in with the mid westerns because it was too literate. I've always had advanced grammar and spelling, compared to that of the culture of my upbringing. In fact, I had gotten beat up in grade school over a compliment I gave to someone and they didn't understand me. They had thought I was making fun of their intellect or something. I apologize for the lengthy post and glad to see someone else that shares my sentiments on conversation pieces.
+Chris Barton What about fruit? That's nutrient rich and intended to be lost. Trees don't "put" energy into their leaves. It's already there. You're also making it sound like a tree deliberately loses its leaves. It's not sentient. It's not preparing for winter. It just happens.
+Tange Rine Yes but fruit is the trees way of reproducing so making it nutritious ensures it gets eaten and the seeds get pooped out somewhere. Whether trees are sentient or not doesn't change the fact that leaves are not nutrient dense.
You're saying "leaves can not be nutrient dense because otherwise trees would not get rid of them." but a tree does not deliberately lose its leaves. There's no decision to be considered and made. *It just happens* even if the tree occurs a loss. Nature is not perfect. If you want to argue tree leaves are not nutrient dense, then give some actual evidence and not a flawed assertion. Lastly, not all fruit have evolved to be eaten but many are still (relatively) nutrient dense. That's because they provide nutrition directly to the seed instead of some host.
+Tange Rine I would argue that nature is perfect. Utterly and absolutely perfect. New leaf growth in spring is full of life and nutrition and this has withered away by autumn when the leaves have finished their purpose and the tree begins to go dormant, putting it's energy underground into its roots. You have only to observe trees to see that this is what is happening. Heck I could be wrong but "it just happens" is not how I feel nature works. Anyway, debate away my friend. I'll talk about trees all day...
Woot! I've been saving coffee grounds from the office coffee pots & tossing them into my compost tumbler. Thanks to Mike, I filled my compost tumbler with leaves in October. :) Definitely need to get a worm bin started...
They are the most useless waste of energy there is - get a rake people - no bending there either plus you don't have to empty a bag, just rake it to where you want it or onto a tarp you can drag further - simple and no wasted fossil fuels.
Kingwalax2 I'm not buying that. Whenever I've seen guys using them they always take AGES and then the leaves just blow right back the next time the wind picks up. The large ergonomic leaf rakes you can get these days are great. Team it up with a cheap tarp and you've got a quick way to get leaves to somewhere they won't blow back from. The only fuel burning is those carbs you probably had too many of anyway.
This guy is clueless. Jice some fruit and compost the pulp, then tell me that it is "Cold" as it breaks down so hot you can feel the heat with your hand. It's hot because of the nitrogen in the pulp.
I saw your comment just as I started asking myself what he means by kitchen garbage, as in, do fruit and vegetable scraps count towards that supposed "coldness"? Quite important to me as I plan on composting on my balcony and will have mostly kitchen scraps to work with (lots of banana, potato, onion peels etc.) What are your experiences with this?
Fruits and veggies are considered greens (nitrogen), not browns (carbon). The way you can tell is if you have too much nitrogen based material, it stinks and actually heats up when breaking down. Too much carbon is like having too many newspapers, nothing negative happens, and they simply deteriorate over time.
Quit the comedy a dramatic presentation. At 5 minutes I'm guessing I'm doing everything right except listen this guy. Its fucken compost not putting a man on the moon.
I do not shred my leaves. I do have chickens running loose and I do fill their roosting area with leaves. Most of my leaves are gone by spring. Have plenty of compost for both garden beds and greenhouse.
I LOVE listening to Mike McGrath! Thanks so much for dedicating your life to helping people take care of their lawns and gardens naturally. You Bet Your Garden radio show is always so informative.
Thoroughly enjoyed the humor and delivery of information. Learned a lot and will use my leaves this fall.
I shred my leaves by putting them in a big pile and running over it with the lawn mower; works great. I also add come grass clippings in with the leaves if I have them. After a while I will add kitchen scraps. Actually, I did that today. The compost has incredible life all throughout it. The worms are so healthy that they move like a bolt of lightning.
ditto!
Great suggestion - Thanks!
How do you make your grass clippings come!??
@@markw3598 Assuming worms, like anything else, are drawn to the more nutritious (better tasting?) area from the surrounding area? If worm count is a concern, you can always harvest worms yourself and deposit them in your compost area!
Wouldn't the worms get chopped up?
This is the best explanation I have seen for composting. I have always been conscious of using my wilted vegetables and coffee grinds. I dont have a bin set up, I just broomed the leaves off the deck in a shady area in a leaf pile and tossed kitchen stuff there. We also used to throw all leaves from the yard in the neighbors yard being that it had been unoccupied for many years. I couldnt bring myself to put them in bags it seemed like such a waste. This confirmed how important those leaves are and I actually had already bought one of those vacuum things for the deck. This video brought all of it together. My pile works but I dont dig it it up to get the soil. I will have to come up with a better way to get my goodies.
Wonderful!!! So much information, in such little time. He said exactly what I was hoping to hear. It makes sense and takes a lot of work and expense out of what should be a simple process. Wonderful presenter too, he sounds like my best college prof's. Loved those people.
Joel,
This presentation is just as OUTSTANDING and informative now as the one you held in OKC back in January 2018. I started my own after attending it, and GREATLY appreciate your expidicious responses to my Q&A emails!!!
I do hundreds of pounds of composting a year, and it all includes the correct kitchen scraps, which in turn decompose just fine and add vital Nitrogen to the mix. Leaves are an important part of composting (Carbon), but just one part. Your kitchen scraps are a lot better in your compost pile/bin then a public landfill.
+Andy Grayman right? why the hell is this speaking on stage and spreading disinfo?
What difference does it make if it is STILL decomposing?
+Lee Forex No difference really except the length of time it takes for one method to work over another and the amount of work required to maintain the different methods. Compost piles require turning, watering, adding the right mix of carbon and nitrogen, and eventually spreading.. Tumblers require turning, monitoring, emptying, spreading etc and take a long time. Worm farms require work also. And try lifting one of those heavy trays when they are full of composted dirt. Too heavy for many people plus you cannot put just anything in a worm farm or you can kill your worms. Mind you the soldier flies will do this but they are more efficient than worms anyway. Lots of choices out there really. I personally find the compot the best . But I am bias of course, however in my years of experimenting I have found it more efficient than most composter on the market. Just depends what you want to achieve.
+Andy Grayman Still I prefer using vermicomposting to get rid of kitchen waste instead of classic composting: it is far harder to get the proportions of C:N right with scraps, it encourages pests and creates storage problems. I would say put only plant residues in the compost pile, leave the food scraps to the worms and cooked food and meat to a Bokashi digester.
Michał Malinowski Totally agree with you Michal about the classic composting method - getting the C;N ratio right etc. But still OK for plant residue. However I have found that spreading your plant residue around your garden beds is more efficient than piling it all in a big heap. It takes up less space, decomposes quickly and doesn't then need to be spread. Plus it covers & protects your soil and helps retain the moisture in your soil. Much like a chop and drop method but if you are in a city garden, chop and drop looks messy unless you mulch the plant waste which to me is the best idea.
As for food scraps there are many options that all require a degree of work including the Bokashi. You still have to bury the Bokashi waste and therefore dig a hole every time you want to dispose of your Bokashi waste. I tell people to get a Compot if they have a Bokashi so they don't have to keep digging that hole. But then why bother with the Bokashi you may ask. Just personal choice really. Everyone likes to do something different and they just like their way. As long as people are doing something it is better then sending it off to the council tips.
We piled up kitchen scraps and whatever lawn waste we gathered up and created a huge compost pile. We never turned it. In spring it had beautiful LEAF MOLD. That put in the ground with transplants made the transplants grow bigger than the labels said!
I'll save you 18 minutes. He states: use a mulcher and shred your leaves before adding them to your compost pile. Don't put "kitchen scraps" in with your compost, just shredded leaves... End.
Rockmonanov
Depends.
If you want something with little nutrient value, but that will make any easily worked top dressing, just make the leaves into the biggest pile you can and then leave it for a year or so.
If you want to make a compost with a higher nutrient value, chuck everything in except the leaves and give everything a good soak. And then give it another soaking because compost heaps can always do with some extra water. Whenever possible, piddle in a bucket, top the bucket up with water and add that to the compost. Then, when there isn't much else going on in the garden, turn the heap over and let some air in.
+fred karno YEP
+fred. I raked a giant pile into a low part of my backyard and left it there. My better half asked me if I was ever going to finish removing the leaf pile. I told her no. I'm making fill for the low spot. She thought I was crazy until I spread it out almost a year later. The grass is thicker there and the water doesn't puddle like it used to
Well, you run the scraps through the chickens first
"Well, you run the scraps through the chickens first". I've also heard that you can substantially reduce your heating bill by keeping 50 chickens in your basement. Win, Win, Win. Get rid of your scraps, heat your house, fertilze your garden.
Mike Mcgrath is the goto guy when it comes to gardening. I listen to him on the radio and have changed my opinion on composting, wood chips and many other things.
I built my home in 1972 which had a large yard. That was the thing--a big yard. I sowed it with rye and blue grass. But the soil had been abused for many years that crab grass, crowsfoot, and buckhorn was what grew best. About 20 years later, and after reading a book on soil, I decided to plow it under, then ran a garden tiller over it. When the old soil drys out in summer, it gets hard as a rock. But before I tilled it, I contacted a lawn service, and asked him to dump all of his leaves and grass clippings on my plowed and spaded up lawn. Then in the autumn, I drove over town begging people for their leaves. The more, the better. Finally, I tilled all the leaves and grass into the soil. I let it winter over. Come Spring, no leaves; just black soil. Then I sowed blue grass. The best blue grass I had ever seen. Though I prefer to sow grass seed in late Sept. as the cooler weather and the angle of the sun's rays promote blue grass growth while the junk grass and weed die out.
You're on the right track; the other thing to learn is to not till your soil. Just continue to add mulch/organic matter, and you'll continue increasing the fertility.
Wynn H. Now people pay for chemically dyed bark to mulch under their evergreens, and around their foundation plantings around the house.
Rffinkle I like to just add mulch/organic matter on top of the soil of my trees, but I wonder if I it benefit them a lot.. I mean I do not care if this process is 60% or even 50% efficient .. because it is convenient.. do you know how efficient it is? like if it is 20% it is poor practice and take forever to improve it.. thanks
I have been listening to Whyy's you bet your garden for 10 years. Mike McGrath is the best.
What a fantastic speaker! That was probably the most entertained I've ever been learning about composting!
I agree! A motivating presentation!
Some videos go viral; this one should go 'fungal' !
Wow!!! Mike you have a fantastic way of educating. Thank you so much, I will treasure my leaves forever now. Blessings to you.
Everything mentioned about composting and mulching is 100 % correct. As a science teacher of biology and chemistry for 38 years, I find this video to be the most ecologically correct statement about mulching and composting I have ever come across. The aim of the humor in this video is right on target and I am especially appreciative of the knock at Al Gore.
BTW, shredding the leaves allows for more rapid decomposition of leaves. The reason is that shredding increases the surface area of the vegetation acted upon by the digestive enzymes released microbes. In addition to the soil nutrients found in it, the use of coffee grounds also adds to the aeration of the composing pile due to the coarseness of the grounds.
Perhaps you then can answer my question. What do you think of adding human waste via a composting toilet to your leaves and then to your vegetable garden? I have read very different opinions on this. I'm thinking of getting a composting toilet for off grid living but i'll want to use that waste to grow food. Some opinions say to Only use it for flower gardens. Your thoughts?
Compost it the way way you would with animal manure. I would not use that composted material in any garden or place you would grow food. The reason is fear of potential transmission of diseases via food grown using composted human manure. There is a difference in the chemical make-up of manures and urine from herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Manure from herbivores is more plant friendly. A problem with animal manures is they tend to attract flies which is usually not a problem from composted vegetation.
Urine from herbivores is somewhat basic(alkaline) while the urine of humans is on the acidic side of pH. Most plants we grow for food prefer soil that is slightly alkaline.That is why we place lime on our lawns and in our gardens. Lime raises the pH of soils that are acidic.
***** I see. Thank you so much for your time and answer.
Would that mean to put the leaves outside in the weather? Does it have to be a hot process, meaning I have to put the leaves in a closed container? Thanks and I appreciate your answer.
But is he really right about the part that it would be enough for a whole growing season? I grow tomatoes and it sounds to good to be true.
Even though Mike Mcgrath may have not covered all the facts on composting, I think he is an excellent speaker and found his talk funny and engaging. Good job!
I really enjoyed this video. I've been a leaf "hoarder" for the past few years and just love what it's done for my garden beds.
And yes--I compost my food wastes as well, but I do have separate piles. I think there's a lot of different methods and you just have to decide what YOU like and what you think works best for you. Happy Gardening! :)
+Susan Schmitz I'm just like you, I try to put as many leaves as I can into my garden and when the trees are bare till them under if the garden isn't to wet. We all don't have to be perfect all of the time, but all of us just do a little something as often as possible.
Splendid Message. What a splendorous wealth given free by nature. The Best Things in life are Free. Only we need the wisdom to see it and enjoy. Cheers. Raman
Loved this. Thank you so much. Have been a maniacal gardener all my life and learnt so much from your talk. :)
I really liked this video. I have started composting all my neighborhood’s leaves, and the results have been amazing! In regards to my kitchen scraps, I just dig out trenches and bury them. That’s it no smell, no mess, no problem!
Forget the leaf blower, use the bagged lawn mower! Suck up the leaves in the bag, dump in a pile. Then without the bag run over the pile multiple times until not much is left. I use a shady spot as a fungal compost pile. Once compost develops you just grind more on the surface, it decomposes in weeks and the ground is teeming with earthworms. Every thing from leaves to branches run through the chipper goes in there. The variety of mushrooms growing in the area is incredible. Have not thrown out a single leaf since 1983. Before that mom would bag and throw out everything picked from the yard. Plants often looked sickly. Now everything grows like weeds and there are no weeds either!
That was the most helpful and informative info I have heard. I am just in the beginning stages of a Back to Eden Garden. I now realize that I should keep not only a compost pile but a worm bin. I am so looking forward to both. thanks you Mike McGrath
Mike,
Thanks for an entertaining and informative presentation. Isn't it funny (odd not ha ha) that nature always has the right answer.
Great to see Mike McGrath , the man behind the radio voice.
I see him just stating things without truly explaining them.
He doesn't really tell you WHY kitchen scraps shouldn't be used, he sort of just asserts it as true.
Actually he DID explain why you should NEVER put kitchen waste in your LEAF compost! He said it is COLD, because it LACKS NITROGEN! Sadly, there is a limited amount of time allowed for speeches. Perhaps you can take away the biggest part of his talk, then simply GOOGLE what YOU THINK the speaker short changed you on! Personally, I think he did a damn good job "pulling me in" on a subject I was not even looking for, held my attention on an otherwise boring (to me) topic and CLEARLY educated me more than others! If you THINK you are so entitled to ALL information for FREE - take the HINT from the speaker as a catalyst and launch pad to DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!!!
@@idontdogmail1669
Well-said. This remarkable video led me to further exploration into composting in general.
I've watched it over and over, and am a bit more able to parse the distinctions among compost processes and types.
From what I gather, Mike is trying to encourage folks to start composting, and to use the common resource of autumn leaves.
Leaf mold and hot compost are cousins. Each uses a process that differs in bacteria vs fungi dominance. One requires aeration while the other uses a fungal mechanism to get oxygen by breaking water molecules. At least that is my understanding. If that is wrong, I'd welcome thoughtful correction.
Ive been hot-composting shredded hardwood leaves for 3 years now, thanks to Mike and the poster of this video. Last autumn I started a leaf mold corral, avoiding oak and favoring maple, apple, hickory, cherry leaves, since the oak leaves take me quite a while to decompose, despite careful monitoring, turning, plenty of coffee grounds etc.
Loved your video. Years ago I had 2 oak trees, rake the leaves into a pile and tossed some cantaloupe seeds. Did nothing else, went to bag them and found cantaloupes growing wild in the pile. Been composting leaves and coffee ever since. Works great for my fruit trees.
I mix everything, kitchen waste, leaves and grass from my lawn. Everything composts perfectly. As long as you don't put any meat or animal fat you won't have any problem composting your kitchen waste
I agree. It's good to compost kitchen scraps because the more people that do that, the more nutrients are added back to the earth where they count, instead of being hidden away with the garbage.
Exactly. I have a compost "bin" made out of wooden pallets (aprox. 3 feet on each side) and it's in my backyard, directly on the ground. Air, moisture and insects take care of everything i throw there and it only takes them a few months. Absolutely no problem. Just throw garbage on the upside and get compost from the lower part. This guy is completely wrong on what he says
Santiago Val totally agree, if its organic, it will compost
Yup and our chickens and rabbits help with it too.
Meat composts fine. It just brings creatures you might not want. I toss fish scraps in the middle of the bin.
Compost is amazing stuff, it not only provides people like myself with a great hobby, not only helps grow things really really well, but compost can also teach you a lot about life and death, and how death is as much a part of the natrual cycle as life is :)
Leaf Blowers as vacuums are terrible for this. Use a lawn mower with a collection bag, collect and shred leaves in one step!
I moved into a new home a few years ago and have a beautiful red maple in my yard. When I first saw the tree flush out new growth in the spring, I could tell that it was deficient in nutrients due to the coloring of the leaves. Ever since I moved in, every year when the leaves fall I rake them along the base and out to the drip line of the tree, then run over them with my lawn mower to shred them. The tree looks healthy and beautiful.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who calls it "Home Despot" XD
So informative! Thank you so much Mike for being such a voice of reason and good for this planet!
The truth. I do the same thing, leaves and grass mulch in the fall, red worms all year round with kitchen scraps. It is magical. I never thought about repurposing the tomato cages in the winter, heck you could put that pile right on top of your raised bed and spread it out in the spring. So simple. You don't grow plants, you grow soil and the plants grow themselves. Lastly that part about no weeds can't be said enough.
my garden soil is largely "weeds." These are wonderful new material for new soil! Pull and compost! What's better?
Many types of "weeds" actually are good for the soil. They have deep tap roots that pull up micro-nutrients deep in the soil that garden plant roots can't normally reach. When the those weeds are composted/or die and lie of the ground and brake down they contribute those nutrients to the upper soil levels for new plants to use in the future.
jmarco21
I hate that I've been doing wrong all these years, but my frustration with my lack of results is what brought me here; so the flip side is that I'm very happy for this information and intend on doing it right from now on. Thank you, Mr. McGrath!
You welcome.
Mike McGrath seems to have a problem with his facts. Composting is not an imitation of nature. Cold composting is. Hot composting is a far different process and is not normally a naturally occurring thing. Kitchen waste can be composted and does in fact make excellent compost. Leaves falling in the woods and breaking down is fine and dandy if you have decades to wait.....which at my age I do not. I feel Mike would do better encouraging all varieties of composting rather than discounting them in favor of one style.
You make a good point. I think many gardeners get caught in their particular style to the exclusion of all else. I mean, just look at how many useful ways there are to grow a garden: square foot, deep mulch, green manuring with tillage, hugelkultur, forest gardening, double-digging biointensive, container gardening, irrigation-free wide rows, mound gardening, sunken beds, aquaponic... it's ridiculous. You'll find people using each method and swearing it's the best while simultaneously disparaging all other approaches. Climates differ, soils differ, approaches differ and people differ. With presentations like this one, it's worth simply absorbing the good info and passing on the rest.
Agreed. I work with two kinds of compost. I compost 30:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio for hot compost. I have a separate bin of mostly dried leaves, sticks, wood chips etc for primarily fungal decomposition. I only use the carbon heavy cold compost when making aerated compost tea.
luc07ry
Right on. Different composts for different applications. There's definitely a difference between bacterially dominated and fungally dominated compost. Brush piles turn into great stuff if you have patience... if you don't, I've just gone and thrown weeds, straw and chicken manure into a 55 gallon drum, covered that with water, then let it sit in the sun for weeks. I know that's a non-recommended anaerobic method, but it worked wonders in my corn patch.
Yes and no. Most home composting does not get hot enough to be "hot" composting. While some piles may steam or smolder, they are well below the threshold of hot composting. Most home gardeners are doing cold composting whether they know it or not. And I know that piles of leaves, etc that I compost in a bin break down and are useable much faster than piles that include grass and or garbage. And, worm bins work much better on garbage than tossing it in a pile in my back yard. Maybe the solution is two bins --- one for just leaves and one for mixes of various ratio's we often learn about. That way you have both the fungal and bacterial processes at work for you. :)
leaves do compost beautifully and quickly. Shred them and just pile them up..I did not mean to compost but while I piled up shred leaves behind the well house..when I remembered them and was going to burn them...there was the best dark earth..oh there was still some shredded leaves..But most was that dark rich soil.
Great talk. I just harvested my first batch of compost. It was in one of those tumblers. It took 4 years to turn into black gold. I only used kitchen scraps. Its amazing how much food waste shrinks. I have lots of leaves but have not been using them.
I actually go around collecting bags of leaves from homes in the fall
I just started composting and this was VERY helpful info! Thank you!
I mixed a bunch of yard wast together, including the fallen fruit and flowers from the trees... and some of the stix too. Next time I will be wiser and just make leaf piles, and keep my separate worm bin for food scraps.😉
If you don't need compost try just taking the bag off your lawnmower and mulching the leaves. This fertilizes the lawn and you'd be surprised how little is left visible once the leaves go through a lawnmower.
Drui Silvanus Great Advice Mate.
good point but i advise people to use a dose of common sense - in my 40' wide yard i have 4 fully grown maple trees. maple leaves don't make a nice mulch, ever, as far as the lawn is concerned. better to collect them up and use them in the garden where it won't matter as much if they form mats. i leave my grass clippings in situ but leaves are another beast entirely, unless you have relatively few of them.
This is one of the best explanations of the what's and what's of simple, doable composting.
Mike doesn't really seem to know what hot compost is. You have to maintain the right carbon to nitrogen ratio, and regularly aerate it. If you do it properly this can lead to dark, rich, fertile compost in an impressively short amount of time. A compost tumbler makes the whole process pretty easy.
Hot compost is a controlled process using microorganisms to break down biomatter, and requires maintenance.
If you don't wanna mess with all of that though you can always check to see if your city offers a compost pickup service. My town recently started a service where they will pick up your kitchen scraps, which are then used to make municipal compost that is cheaply available to the public. I hear some towns even give away their compost.
Mike should be promoting all kinds of composting. I use dried leaves and straw as mulch in my garden which enriches the soil. I "chop and drop" when weeding or pruning to further mulch and enrich the soil. I spread my hot compost, cold compost, and vermicompost on my raised beds in the spring or fall. I bury my bokashi compost in a neglected corner of my yard.
The best time to start composting is now, and it's easier than ever.
I just did
Great video. We've been composting our leaves and using a wormery for our kitchen waste for years now. Almost effortless. Over the years, we've tried almost all the methods put forth by various experts, but for us, this is the simplest, least space consuming and fastest way - and the only thing we do is chop the leaves and collect the compost in the spring. If you do not have a shredding leaf blower, you can mow your leaves, or even better, put the leaves in a garbage can and use a weed-whacker (strimmer) - gets the leaves so fine it is almost dust. Put a clear garbage bag over it while you work so you don't breath in the dust but can still see what you are doing. Or use a respirator. Craigslist in the fall for clean leaves, and several folks will usually respond.
Main thing to remember is to keep the leaves wet/moist - dry leaves will just sit there and do nothing...
This may be good for the incurious who knew nothing about composting before this TEDX talk. However, for anyone willing to do a little work, the Berkley method of hot composting, or having and allowing backyard chickens to process your composting materials for you, are far superior methods. Geoff Lawton is the better composting coach.
This is really good for people who tend to add a cup of fertilizer to a plant when the package says to add a third of a cup (because the more the merrier). By the way, he _does_ add kitchen scraps to _his_ compost piles (he admits to it on his weekly radio show). He doesn' t add clippings because he has a lawn and cares about how it looks.
Read my comment. 40 years of producing garden soil is my proof.
I agree, Geoff Lawton is a great coach and very knowledgeable. There are those of us that are not in a position to have chickens, or access to the animal waste (manure). For those that can and do, great. For those of us that do not, mike's method will work for almost everybody, unless you live in the A. AA. Mt. Everest and some (not all) desserts.
Fabulous speaker, great informative talk.
Ha this guy is funny. Nice presentation :)
LOL I compost year round -Layering greens browns and scraps. Love my gorgeous brown organic dirt !
Good God, America. You don't need electricity for everything! Get a rake and a shovel - you might even be in danger of burning a few calories while you're at it.
+Eiléanóir CM hahaha!!! Well said!! :)
Good God, imaginary person from imaginary place, you should wipe your arse before you are upwind. Don't you use toilet paper?
No shredding that way!!
Feeling strongly about something you are passionate about should not negate common logic!
Straw man. Irritating.
I have been putting food scraps and vegetable trimmings, and all sorts of other organic stuff, into my compost for years and it breaks down nicely. Leaves make good compost, but they aren't the only things that do.
The best takeaway from this talk is his point about the STBs (Stupid People Bags). He hits that nail right on the head. Don't buy these things! Mulch those leaves... even if you don't compost, it's still great for your lawn. No leaf blower? Use your lawnmower. Works just as well (esp. if it has a mulching attachment).
I use SPB to store extra leaves in over winter. Will get two years out of them and then used their stained and brittle carcasses as the bottom layer of a pile. I'm the weirdo on the block piling my leaves around the trunks of my trees. flower beds and garlic patch every fall. And yes, I do steal my neighbors filled SPB's from time to time.
Great episode - there's a guy that knows how to use just enough humor to get his point across.
Just save your leaves and your lawn clippings in a 50/50 mix.....(mix them or mow them to chop)
and lay them out on top of the ground ......(a rototiller would help speed things up).
This is called sheet composting and it works wonderfully. Low effort and great results....oh and it mimics mother nature! Hot composting is better if you want to kill bugs or disease but cold composting gets the worms real busy. (just my 2 cents).
I'm old and have tried many methods......easy is ALWAYS more doable and productive!
sheet composting is a great way to get rid an over abundance of leaves
I've been having success with kitchen scraps in my compost, of course having worms and others of the waste management team are really helpful. Love it for having tea for my plants :D
I didn't care about Karma, I was just tired of spending cash on bags of compost for all my plants. Seemed cheaper to just make it myself.
I'm in the same boat. I'm a soon to be first time home owner, and the idea of buying dirt just drives me crazy.
+hypersapien Same here. And as poorly as my first 6 months of composting has gone, getting a massive fire ant colony in my compost bin has been a hidden blessing: everywhere they dig is turned into moist black dirt in a week. Lol as long as I use a long pole and back off when they swarm out of the bin, I have a hyper composting system.
Now how to figure out what to do with the ants before I use the dirt.
Awesome video by my old friend Mike, former editor of Orgianic Gardening, who apparently doesn't get any older, but keeps getting wiser. Nicely done!
This is an amazing video and I'm sure this method works extremely well but n
Nature has been adding a heck of a lot more to the ground than leaf matter over the last...forever: decaying plants, dead animals and humans, vegetable and fruit matter, faeces of living animals, humans and insects and the countless bodies of insects and arachnids...both ground dwelling, underground dwelling and sky dwelling. It's about layers, moisture and size/heat. the average composting Joe can take note.
Oh wow, so glad I stumbled across this vid... I started gardening in 1992 or so, with no prior experience and no one to mentor me, and I learned everything I needed to know from Organic Gardening magazine. Mike's writing and leadership style were so kind and positive... after he left OG the mag's style became so dry and dull I canceled my subscription and never went back. Those years that I did have with OG were WONDERFUL, though, and I'm so very thankful. I can't wait to watch this vid.
He is actually incorrect.
What is formed is leaf mold, which is then further broken down into Humus.
Very essential, but technically not compost.
I really enjoy that talk, now I know more about composting, Thank you for sharing this timely information.
I have no problem turning kitchen waste compost.
Liberty Garden Same here, just takes longer
+maxdecphoenix He only made the comments about kitchen waste because a lot of people have no idea about carbon and nitrogen. This video is more about composting for beginners.
sportjunky4371 no it wasn't. The whole video was about ridiculing established composting theory. Because 'France'.
+Liberty Garden i know right? this is actually disinfo -- like you can put kitchen waste as long as you balance it with browns....its actually better with kitchen waste because you get a wider range of nutrients and microorganisms to add to your soil. this guy is wrong, straight up
I live in the Pacific North West. Every fall I put the leaves on my tiny garden plot, I get a good 12 to 18 inches of leaves. I sprinkle some shovelfuls of dirt on top and rake it in. By the time the spring rolls around the leaves are pretty much all turned to soil. The leaves also help prevent the soil nutrients from being washed away in the long rainy season. This probably wouldn't work in colder climates, but the days frequently get warm enough in the winter in the PNW to allow the leaves to compost without being in a huge pile.
I put my kitchen waste into a large Tupperware tub (with a few small holes drilled in the bottom and kept outside). This is a worm farm. The worms eat the kitchen scraps and turn it into soil. When it's half full of soil (worm casings) I put half of the soil into the garden and keep adding kitchen scraps to the Tupperware container.
Compost happens. Using Bokashi composting methods, I have composted thousands of pounds of food waste over this past year, most of it being in the driest parts of the summer here in Southern California. A lot of it was fish carcasses and innards from a local fish market. I did it in my front yard and most of it was complete from restaurant/kitchen food waste to compost in less than six weeks. I also had 15 full loads of arborist's tree trim mulch dropped into my front yard 1 this spring and summer. The shredded leaf material is still in piles. But the mixed material with all the food waste is part of my greenhouse potting mix and growing thousands of seedlings as write this comment. So while this guys talk was funny and entertaining, it says nothing of the millions of tons of food waste and compostable materials that fill our landfills each year. Wait, NO... it does say something It says send it away and keep the leaves. Sorry but I call BS!
Ronnie Mccord i
It's true. Growing up in Michigan, we composted the neighbors' maple leaves that blanketed our own treeless yard. My dad and I had some crazy big gardens going, and needed the compost anyways, so despite grumbles, it worked out. Over maybe 10 years, we turned nearly solid clay soils (from when the basement was dug) into the most beautiful crumbly loamy soil that I still get wistful thinking about it, here in the sandy wastes of Florida. And our compost was nearly 100% leaves.
I piss on my compost pile at every chance. Please don't tell me I'm wasting my time with that, too.
Nah, good nitrogen there, especially makes good compost starter. Of course, over-doing it will affect the bacterial action and worms negatively. I'm not really sure how much it would take to do that; you're probably fine.
just make sure to dilute it with water.
Yes, always good to wee on the compost. The nitrogen is good, perhaps even more important is recovering the phosphorous in urine.
Urea...it helps break things down.
I do that also. But during the growing season most of the pee is put into bottles and let sit for 2 to 3 days. Then dumped out in numberous spots around the garden. Aging it brings out a stronger ammonia smell that rabbits and deer seem to dislike and they stay away from the garden. Male pee seems to work better than female for this. But skunks don't seem to mind it, especially when the sweet corn is starting to ripen ;-( Tip; use the large mouthed bottles from sports drinks, they are easier to fill than small mouthed water or pop bottles ;-) I can't confirm or deny it, but I have read that aged pee is better than fresh for the compost pile.
Well done! Good information presented with humor!
and if you don't have a balanced lawn, you will kill it by leaving all the grass clippings on it, it will mulch your lawn because the soil does not have enough carbon to break down the clippings. just like when people try to clean up all the fall leaves with their lawnmower. it just chops them up till they are too small for the mower to pick up. then it smothers the lawn to death. Either way, stop planting lawns, they are a waste of time, water and soil.
Was not expecting that last line. So true.
Just so everyone knows, here in the Southern US, Live Oaks (one of the most abundantly grown trees) drop their copious amounts of leaves in the Spring! They keep them all Winter, and just before the new leaves appear, they drop the old ones. In Central FL, where I live, this occurs in mid to late February. Just in time for Spring planting! And despite claims I've heard to the contrary, they make wonderful compost, shredded or not.
i love this so much omfg hes funny
Whats funnier is he sounds exactly like comedian Louis Black.
Brilliant talk! I learned about spent coffee grounds some years ago from an old gaffer gardener at a local event that preaches the gospel of composting. It's good to hear you mention it again and I'm now determined to go to my local coffee shop and ask for their spent grounds :-) Thank you for a thoroughly enjoyable, humourous (oops! I must be British because I put a 'u' in humourous!) and very, very informative talk. Oh, and you're right about European children speaking multiple languages, too - the Brits are almost as bad as the Yanks in the foreign language department - they just expect the rest of the world to speak English!
Some good tips, some horse shit too. Composting everything is a good idea, not just what composts fast. Not all compost is created equal and getting something good and fast does require metering what goes in (accelerants), but it also requires diversity (nutrient and potential energy), and tactics (expansion and heat management). Coffee grounds are good, but fish guts are even better. Leaves and guts can help make better compost of bone and paper, but it doesn't constitute all that is good about compost. Here is a person, for lack of effort and foresight, congratulates himself for horticultural living and then advocates for more dumpster filling of what he correctly points out as having a long biodegradable half-life. It's lazy composting and imo results in lower quantities of deader dirt.
As we compost in our piles, we alternate put dry leaves and kitchen waste with adding buttermilk and cowdung for bettre microbs and its activity as its a aerobic compost .its a excellent highly nutritive fertilizer for our plants and hotriculture.
I'm studying horticultural science at university, you can compost just about anything organic based. It all comes down to method.
Mike is spouting out common knowledge that you will find in just about any 'how to compost' book. Nothing new here. Mike is also talking about making a leaf mould, which is not very nutrient rich (although it adds structure to compost), and being carbon rich, can take a long time to break down. Kitchen waste can be nitrogen rich, it all depends on what it is - like vegetable and fruit peelings. Leaves don't have to be shredded, but can easily be done so using a lawn mower (just leave the leaves on the ground and run over them, your catcher attachment on the lawn mower will do the rest).
Composting is easy. For the beginner, a 50:50 volume split of browns (carbon - leaves, cardboard, acid free paper, untreated paper based cat litter) and greens (kitchen waste, animal feces, grass clippings) is ideal using the hot composting method (which requires the pile to be at least 1 meter high, wide and deep - size does matter). You can also use a hot composting bin like a green johanna or a bokashi bin if you don't have space for a pile. Bokashi bins are great because you can just about anything organic in it (including meat, bones and animal waste).
You can compost cat and dog feces using the hot composting method, the hot composting method kills most harmful bacteria - however its a good idea not use feces that have come from unwell animals.
The pile needs to be turned once in a while to maintain it oxygen, and needs to be as moist as a well wrung out sponge (damp), this helps the good bacteria break down your pile and encourages worms (make sure that bottom of your pile or bin is exposed to the ground otherwise the good guys can't come in and lend a hand). Make sure that your pile is covered with something like a tarp or old organic based carpet eg; wool. This will help maintain the heat and keep out excess moisture (and animals).
Laura thanks for your detail post, though it is 5 years later. a question, if I throw my scraps fruit peel, egg shell in small pieces directly on the soil under my trees how efficient it is , 50% or 60% if so it is the easiest way.. or do I get very very little nutrients, I have never found study on that. thanks again for your post.
Hes humorous at the same time of being educative an informative..
I liked this video, but leaves are carbon, what about nitrogen? If threes produce leaves and they are incorporated in soil, trees and bushes also produce fruits and vegetables, like apples, bananas, figs, berries, potatoes, eggplants and etc. and if we do not pick them, they also fall like leaves and are incorporated into the soil, so what about if I have left clean organic pulp after juicing or nice peels, not a garbage but peels which by nature's law also fall and become soil, that is not a garbage, that is also natural nitrogen source, why do I have to throw that away? I think nitrogen carbon mixture will work even better like John does at "Learn Organic Gardening at GrowingYourGreens" and also adds rock trace minerals and worm castings.
I just found a Q&A where Mike McGrath contradicts everything he said in the video and admits to using "every scrap of [his] kitchen waste". I think he just needed a hook to get people to watch his Ted Talk and buy his book. "Everything You Know About Composting Is Wrong" seems to be working pretty well. www.gardensalive.com/product/composting-kitchen-waste-can-be-tricky/you_bet_your_garden
+emoteman Yeah, I agree, some of us aren't as stupid as he makes out. It's not as hard as he makes it either.
kitchen scraps vary a lot depending on what it is and where it was grown but they generally do contain enough nitrogen to break down high carbon materials such as leafs faster than they would decompose on their own. I've built tons of compost of high quality with wood chips and food scraps. With high lignin materials like leaves or wood chips its important to make sure the entire pile is wet, not soggy but wet. Leaf mold is very valuable with nothing else added. It is very mineral rich and it also attracts beneficial fungi. The fungi are needed to complete the composting process and incorporate the leaves into the soil. A soil rich in fungi is best for most crops. The cabbage family and beet family like soil more dominated by friendly bacteria.
mark harris agree
my interpretaciónof kitchen garbage - cooked food left overs, ie. hamburgerhelper, mac and cheese, lunch meats, pizza crusts, potato chips. whatever processed food you don't want to eat.
This man is so cute has a great sense of humour and presents information which can be a bit dry so well it is entertaining, thank you
Winter is coming. Mike McGrath I have loved your essays and articles and they have sustained me for years. OG Mag has never been the same without you. Your irreverence and snarkiness is spot on. Nature is irreverent and snarky. Anyone complaining below please, get off the cross ... we need the wood for a Autumn Equinox bonfire and pagan ritual. I don't use a blower/sucker but I have been known to stick my weed whacker in a trash can to shred leaves up. Takes about 15 seconds. There is no one right way to compost. I mix my shredded leaves with kitchen waste (Sorry Mike, let's agree to disagree on this - it's just easier for me and it works) and coffee grounds I scrounge and then, as necessary (using the smell and eyeball test) tweak as necessary. That can mean adding more "brown" (leaves and dried grass) or more "green" (kitchen waste or grounds). And yes, I pee on my pile and occasionally add the dried blood of my enemies (or blood meal from Home Despot) to get it to the point where it smells like puppy breath. When it reaches 150 degrees I do the compost dance as it's killing all the viruses and weed seeds. I can turn a pile of leaves and garbage into compost in three weeks all year. Sometimes just for ducks I throw some worm castings into a "cool" pile/bin and in a few days I get a red wriggler worms so I have some vermiculture going on and commence to keep it fed with mostly kitchen scraps. I keep the bin very high so if it does heat up the worms can escape to the cool nether regions. In short, find free compostables and work with that.
Every neighborhood has at least one and usually three or four good free sources be that coffee grounds, tree service mulch, dried kelp, horse, llama, chicken poo, or as Mike suggests, your dumb neighbors leaves and lawn clippings. Be careful to not bring in toxic stuff that's been poisoned with chemical fertilizers and herbicides. (Out here our community compost got f'ed up horribly when clueless folks disposed of plant matter killed with herbicides and the compost now kills everything.. I'm glaring at you Monsanto!!! Better yet, I'm supporting the huge boycott of each and every one of your evil products..) Take a class or read a book and be prepared to discard 90% of what you hear and just go your own way. Make mistakes, fix them, learn ... teach. Best thing we can all do is get people to join us in composting and usually they need a little push. For us, people see my incredibly healthy garden and then they ask why my gardens are so lovely I take them right to the compost and say it all happens here. And did I tell you Winter is coming?
+Randy Baker
Thank You. Old post I know but nice to hear a balanced, rational (mostly sane ;) response. I don't understand how people feel that if someone has a different opinion than they do they have a right to ridicule, resort to name calling, etc. Take it with a grain of salt. I learned a few things from this talk, which was helpful, and if there were a few things I didn't agree with then I can throw them on the compost pile with my kitchen scraps. I can still appreciate the person and his effort to educate and encourage more people to use leaves for compost.
+Anne Lilley Thank you, Anne. My grandpa used to quote Mark Twain: Don't argue with fools, bystanders may not be able to tell the difference. I may have scrambled that but I think the point is sound. The really beautiful thing about compost is that it's so darn forgiving!
Speaking of in/sanity, my buddy was recently weed whacking some brush on his property and got into a couple patches of Jimson Weed. Apparently the whacker atomized some of the powerful alkaloids in the plant and he breathed it in. I'm told 20 minutes later his pupils were the size of dimes and he was starting to hallucinate mildly. His wife called me over and once I saw what had happened I got him settled down, put some music on and sat with him for about 90 minutes during which he settled back down. Point being we have so much to learn from each other, why criticize at all. As you say lets all just take what we like and leave the rest.
Great stuff. I used to have to ask my kids if they'd be embarrassed if I grabbed the leaf bags and grass bags from various houses on the way back home; they never said they had a problem with it. After a year I had neighbors coming by almost daily to fill a couple 5gl buckets of compost from the backyard for their gardens.
this seems more like "How to compost if you have no fucking clue"
well some people dont have a clue - dont be so superior
Now if you could just learn to read and write, you could conquer the world!
GOOD LUCK GRINGO PENDEJO
IZ BE FUKING THEM BROADS TO ALL CINDS A WEYS NE WEY YU WAN SPEL IT PUTO
I cannot thank the trump, (donald the quack as I refer to this major threat to our society) seeing he would and will if he could repeal the First Amendment. As there may be children that do not need to hear the foul language I am reading and also those of us that firmly believe that a point can be made without foul words.
Now for my point. I am 60 years old and consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about composting, but I am not so old that I cannot learn something new to me. I do not know whether to be glad or sad that Andrew A. thinks he knows everything there is to know about composting. I am sad that he feels that he has to use foul words to let us know that he feels that those of us that are willing to learn something new or different are inferior to him.
Love this! I'm working on a garden evangelism TedX talk. This is inspiring to me!
Problem is new houses in America do not have yards any more. This disgusts me. I want my yard. Both parents are supposed to work now days, so who is going to the gardening anymore. Not even any time to train the children anymore.
Right. 😢😊
The idea behind adding your "kitchen garbage" (basically food scraps) to your compost is that you're not adding it to your trash (creating more waste that goes into landfills) or wasting it by washing it down the drain via the disposal. I compost everything... egg shells, coffee grounds, fruit & veggie scraps, even pasta and meat (but no bones). As long as you mix in enough browns with it (dried leaves & grass, paper, cardboard, etc.), it will break down into the most rich soil you've ever seen. But you have to turn it often (I use a pitchfork) and keep it moist. His point about breaking down the leaves before adding it is a good one and will help speed the process, but even that isn't crucial as long as you keep it aerated and moist.
this guy belongs on a street corner, or harassing lawn & garden employees, not on a TED talk.
this is one place where the commenters are a better resource than the speaker.
I would trust this guy, who has been writing and studying organic gardening for decades, over you.
If he's been writing about green to brown ratios, aerobic bacteria, beneficial decomposers, humates, fast vs slow compost, double digging, indigenous microorganisms, fermented plant juice rock dust & nutrient availability,
so be it, everything I know must be wrong.
I just need "leaves".
Elias Ednie
Maybe you've been making things more complex than they need to be.
I think his point is that people throw away the most beneficial things for their lawns and gardens and go spend money and effort on all this junk. I recycle all of the yard waste back into my gardens.
Billdo O'Reilly True, his point is, leaves are valuable, especially if they are dried and who has time to stir the heat to the outside and colder to the center. Once people start ragging here, they all do. Sheep. I'd like to see them make a video and keep it dull and see who likes it. lol Many people don't get it that you make TWO things: Carbon and Nitrogen. I doubt you wanna make the organic tea with using carbon and worms....you need mostly the nitrogen and less of the carbon.
Really brilliant and witty. Thanks for sharing!
Why not just mix them all together. Shreded leaves kitchen scraps and some worms. No reason to get all technical about it.
Yea, now you have the right idea, and don't let the pile dry out. If I'm out watering the lawn or garden, I always go to the compost pile and shoot some water down into the pile so it is wet at least a foot down in the pile, and that isn't hard to do while I'm communing with nature. Don't have a bunch of anything in one place, spread it out. Spread the joy and layer.
@AnusiaLA: Mow up the pine needles, along with the top of the grass, using your mower's grass catching bag. That will chop the needles somewhat. Dump it somewhere to compost. The grass clippings will help. You can also add coffee grounds and stir them in.
I don't shred my leaves. I make my chickens do it :D
We compost our leaves in the fall covering them with black lumber wrap in the spring. The past 3 years using only coffee grounds as an addition we have harvested 40 to 50 wheelbarrows of great soil each fall within 1 year of the start.
I would never employ Mike McGrath as my gardener
why?
cos theres just a lot of misinformation leading to poorly balanced compost in a quite inefficient way
His main argument is that everything _most of_ your plants need in terms of food can be found in the leaf of a deciduous leaf that came down in the cool of autumn. If you can break that leaf down to a form that doesn't stop water and air and water from reaching the roots of your plant, then you are in business. In that sense, you don't really _need_ to add kitchens scraps and grass clipping to your compost pile. He says not to do that for a good reason. The grass clippings from _his_ lawn stay on his lawn (because he cares about his lawn) but he does add some kitchen scraps to his piles; he says not to because people tend to add too many and the wrong kind.
He does a radio show where there are guests of his (who he respects) who add just about everything to their compost piles. He understands there are many ways to go about doing this. The first compost pile I attempted was a complete failure because I made the mistakes he's trying to caution against.
I recommend his show. I wouldn't have wasted my summer if I had listened to it. You don't have to do everything he says. I throw my kitchen scraps in my worm bin because I place more value on castings than compost but I add "clippings" because they really heat up the pile and I don't care about a nice neat looking lawn.
Yeah me too, I'm not really a compost person much at all, attracts far too many pests for certain use; castings however I agree are great and also deter pests :) However, there are still some fundamentals to a balanced compost and they don't include stuff like grass (which are also probably full of grass and weed seed). I'm not hating, just wouldnt let him tend my own garden ;)
why not? I think he got something ! are you that schooled in gardening that you know it all?
GREAT VIDEO!.And if your Ash tree is treated against EAB, compost those leaves separately and utilize it as mulch in the spring to help feed & heal your tree. Make a video on how to properly apply wood or bark mulch around the base of trees since people are killing them by improperly volcano mulching.
Speak English? Barely? You can speak it barely? Start by rhyming compost with lost not with toast! It's not 'oh' because it contains the word post. How do you pronounce impostor? Does it rhyme with toaster? ;-)
(Yes, its a smiley. I am posting light heartedly to make you smile, so please don't become outraged and indignant. The joke was originally made during the lecture.)
Ah, an intelligent sense of humour!
I'm not becoming outraged, however you are simply uninformed. It actually IS pronounced with an 'oh' sound. Not 'lost' sound. See the definition: Compost -ˈkämˌpōst/
Sound link: ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sounds/de/0/compost.mp3
bugs181 Sorry, I don't want this to get to be a big issue so I'll try to be brief. You deserve a reply but it will be final. You're missing the point totally! I posted a poor little joke which was based around the fact that we speak differently. You have obviously interpreted that as "Yank bashing by a limey". It wasn't. Fragile ego again.
You're recording of "Kahmpohst" is as wrong as the original speaker above, that is to most of the people who live in "Otherworld"! In English it rhymes with lost, while Americans prefer to rhyme it with toast. It must rank alongside other linguistic monstrosities like "omg" and "the thing about that is is that..." and everything being "like". "England and America are two countries divided by a common language". (It was a Brit who wrote that). You're recording is obviously from an American source. I could produce just as many as yourself speaking English and rhyming with from and lost. As such it may well be considered absolutely correct - in America where you speak American! But that doesn't make it universally right, it's wrong if we are talking about English!
I suggest we start to accept that, for your own reasons of identity and control, you have bent the English language so far away from its original form without even knowing why it was the way it was in the first place, (all of those "irrelevant" silent letters for example), that you have a new language of your own. Stand up and applaud that and call it American. I do.
Now let's get back to important things like how to make better kahmpoast. :-)
Albert Burton Thank you for the reply. Additionally, thank you for being reserved and not coming right out and calling me an idiot. It seems to be the theme these days rather than invoking a good conversation.
Also, please note that I wasn't insulted or otherwise. I was wishing to enlighten you. But as it seems, the tables have turned. I don't have a fragile ego and will admit that I'm wrong.
I do recognize the fact that most Brits and English speakers vary so widely, that there's even a Stack Exchange forum for these types of discussions. One such example is how Americans pronounce "solder" with an "odder" sound, while most Brits will say they pronounce with an "older" sound.
I wasn't aware that there was more than one pronunciation of "compost" though.
One thing we can both agree upon is the fact that the new generation of Americans have butchered the English language so much, that it sounds awful. I will always mispronounce a few words though, just because of being raised with a grass-roots in the pronounciation of certain words. If it's worth anything, I've always pronounced the word "solder" correctly and get odd looks most the time.
I appreciate you taking the time to correct me.
The true topic at hand is much more fascinating anyway! :D
Hellfirejuddy Thanks for taking the time to post.
In most our country's culture, I feel that we've all lost something along the way. Why is it so difficult for this generation to show one another respect? It's not that difficult to have a good debate, conversation, or understanding. I too am tired of seeing the same old jabs and insults. Nothing productive ever comes of it, so why even bother? If people don't agree with something and have nothing productive to add to the conversation then just move along.
The "thongs" reference brings up an interesting topic in it's own right. Across most of America, thongs can definitely be used to refer to a type of underwear. Why I find it interesting is because "hicks" of some midwestern (states) culture, we also refer to flip-flops as thongs, however most Americans would look at us oddly. It now makes me curious if the "modern" culture has caused a shift in the word "thongs" because it's usually the cultures with less education that refer to "thongs" as footwear.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the "hick" culture in America but I'd be happy to enlighten you on the topic. I came from a poor-ish family that are referred to as hicks. I then moved to the west coast and obtained a college degree. My english never really fit in with the mid westerns because it was too literate. I've always had advanced grammar and spelling, compared to that of the culture of my upbringing. In fact, I had gotten beat up in grade school over a compliment I gave to someone and they didn't understand me. They had thought I was making fun of their intellect or something.
I apologize for the lengthy post and glad to see someone else that shares my sentiments on conversation pieces.
To all my old gardening friends and to all my new gardening friends this is the most important thing to know about gardening!!!
Leaves are not nutrient dense, they are very low in nutrients (why would a tree put energy and goodness into a product it's about to discard?)
+Chris Barton What about fruit? That's nutrient rich and intended to be lost. Trees don't "put" energy into their leaves. It's already there. You're also making it sound like a tree deliberately loses its leaves. It's not sentient. It's not preparing for winter. It just happens.
+Tange Rine Yes but fruit is the trees way of reproducing so making it nutritious ensures it gets eaten and the seeds get pooped out somewhere. Whether trees are sentient or not doesn't change the fact that leaves are not nutrient dense.
You're saying "leaves can not be nutrient dense because otherwise trees would not get rid of them." but a tree does not deliberately lose its leaves. There's no decision to be considered and made. *It just happens* even if the tree occurs a loss.
Nature is not perfect. If you want to argue tree leaves are not nutrient dense, then give some actual evidence and not a flawed assertion.
Lastly, not all fruit have evolved to be eaten but many are still (relatively) nutrient dense. That's because they provide nutrition directly to the seed instead of some host.
+Tange Rine I would argue that nature is perfect. Utterly and absolutely perfect. New leaf growth in spring is full of life and nutrition and this has withered away by autumn when the leaves have finished their purpose and the tree begins to go dormant, putting it's energy underground into its roots. You have only to observe trees to see that this is what is happening. Heck I could be wrong but "it just happens" is not how I feel nature works. Anyway, debate away my friend. I'll talk about trees all day...
Woot! I've been saving coffee grounds from the office coffee pots & tossing them into my compost tumbler. Thanks to Mike, I filled my compost tumbler with leaves in October. :) Definitely need to get a worm bin started...
Leaf blowers ought to be outlawed.
They are the most useless waste of energy there is - get a rake people - no bending there either plus you don't have to empty a bag, just rake it to where you want it or onto a tarp you can drag further - simple and no wasted fossil fuels.
I don't think either of you know how to use a leaf blower.
Kingwalax2
Explain to me the advantage of a leaf blower vs a rake then O all-knowing one.
Speed clearly, you can clear a large area in a fraction of the time.
Kingwalax2
I'm not buying that. Whenever I've seen guys using them they always take AGES and then the leaves just blow right back the next time the wind picks up.
The large ergonomic leaf rakes you can get these days are great. Team it up with a cheap tarp and you've got a quick way to get leaves to somewhere they won't blow back from.
The only fuel burning is those carbs you probably had too many of anyway.
Excellent advice. I have found the same things to be true. Thank you for this video.
This guy is clueless. Jice some fruit and compost the pulp, then tell me that it is "Cold" as it breaks down so hot you can feel the heat with your hand. It's hot because of the nitrogen in the pulp.
totally agree. I have a mid sized compost. around 300 liters. It's warm in the middle in winter. the body the top is always the first to melt.
systematic101 nn
I saw your comment just as I started asking myself what he means by kitchen garbage, as in, do fruit and vegetable scraps count towards that supposed "coldness"? Quite important to me as I plan on composting on my balcony and will have mostly kitchen scraps to work with (lots of banana, potato, onion peels etc.) What are your experiences with this?
Fruits and veggies are considered greens (nitrogen), not browns (carbon). The way you can tell is if you have too much nitrogen based material, it stinks and actually heats up when breaking down. Too much carbon is like having too many newspapers, nothing negative happens, and they simply deteriorate over time.
Fun and enlightening. Having access to a shredder could be a problem. Otherwise Forget Monsanto you don't need 'em.
Quit the comedy a dramatic presentation. At 5 minutes I'm guessing I'm doing everything right except listen this guy. Its fucken compost not putting a man on the moon.
I do not shred my leaves. I do have chickens running loose and I do fill their roosting area with leaves. Most of my leaves are gone by spring. Have plenty of compost for both garden beds and greenhouse.
Amazing how every Joe and Jenny who puts out a vid tells you everyone else is all wrong and know nothing. Just saying.
I've used leaves to protect my crops during the snow. Totally worked and didn't have to pay for a tarp.