The Compost with Dead Leaves

My husband is a weekend gardener who has been growing 

approx. 500 pots of Christmas roses in our garden. 

 

He teaches science in a high school on weekdays, and particular about and chemistry.

 

As you can see in this picture, he is taking care of them. 

 

In this season, the plants grew bigger, so he was trasferring them to bigger pots.

 

He also removes brown leaves using scissors.

 

Whenever he changes the pots, he always uses new packages of mixture soil

because it contains a lot of chemical fertilizer.

As a result, we have lots of used soil.

* * * * * * * * * *

We also have a lot of dead leaves of maple and apricot trees in this season.

This picture shows a 15-liter bucket filled with dead leaves

 

Sometimes we go to a restaurant which offers packages of rice brans for free. 

Whenever we find them, we bring them back to our home.

Recently, I came up with an idea of making compost using them.

I prepared 2 liters of used soil (strainered in advance), 2 liters of rice bran, and 2 liters of water.

I mix all of them in a waterproofed vinyl bag. 

I shake the bag several times to mix it well.

After I made the mixture, I put them to a sandbag.

 

The polyethylene sand bag is tolerable enough for several times usage. 

The package of 10 bags is selled around 400 yen.

 

I bind the opening so that worms won't come inside.

The bag is non-waterproof, and the inside will dry up little by little. 

 I placed the opening facing side down, and put the bag in a place

where it can breathe as much as possible.

There are many dead leaves nowadays, so I had already made 4 packages until yesterday.

The mixure will become useful as leaf mold after two months or so. 

In early spring, I am planning to dig holes around the maple and appricot trees

to add the mixture because it contains rich organic fertilizer. 

I am happy with fewer garbages in my daily life.