Fall brings on a shower of leaves
like you're at a ticker tape parade at Time Square, New York City, on New Year's Eve
After the party of falling paper or #nature's party of falling leaves from trees, they both need to be picked up and discarded, or do they?
The bounty of nutrients provided by trees going dormant, can be a true gift. I'm sure you've heard this one before, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, you should accept something that is offered to you or take advantage of an opportunity. In this case you want to take advantage of what has been relinquishes by trees, their once green foliage.
These two Red Oak trees alone provide us with almost half of the brown material we need for our compost pile. Generally, a ratio of 3-parts browns to 1-part greens works well. For a list of what is considered brown or green, you can take a look here.
https://www.thespruce.com/composting-greens-and-browns-2539485
Collecting the nutrient rich leaves from the two oak trees I mentioned above is made easy with our tractor. Mowing them into smaller pieces helps them to break down quickly. I make windrows with the grated leaves.
Collecting them with the lawn sweeper, seen in this collage, our rakes see little action!
The far pile in this picture will be ready for next spring. The newly collected leaves will have green matter added to it through the year and be ready the following growing season.
Our compost pile has been brewing for over a year now, it is truly Black gold. Everything has broken down except for the corn cobs which will have disappeared by next spring, consumed by the microorganisms.
If you're going to pick them up you may as well use them!
As of November 2nd, cabbage was all that we still had growing in our garden.
Cabbage worms and other pests have not been present for the past month, due to the cold. After peeling back the damaged leaves, the remaining head is perfect. It looks like some coleslaw and boiled cabbage are in the offing.
The garlic bed looks like it has a few garlic bulbs that finally decided to spring into action.
It's great to have been able to harvest so much garlic this past year. Not only do we have enough to consume in excess for the next year, but we also had plenty to plant.
Just a little reminder of days past when our growing season was in full swing.
Talking about how quickly time passes, I turned 70 years young today November 6th, which is almost impossible for me to comprehend.
Enjoy every day you take a breath of FRESH AIR,
that comes by way of TREES and all that is Green.