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(Jay Chan) wrote in message om...

compost from leaves has roughly 1/5-1/7 the nutrient content of cow
manure (per unit of dry weight), with similar N/P/K profile, according
to "square foot gardening" author Bartholomew (so 0.4-0.2-0.4 or
less).

This means I cannot totally reply on compost to add enough nutrient to
my vegetable garden.

Last fall, I only added grand total of one beg of manure to the entire
vegetable garden because I was counting on the leaf compost for the
rest. I guess I had made a mistake.

I don't know about that. If the soil is already moderately fertile, no
mistake.
You should test the soil (of course, by the time I got around to doing
that, I had added so much stuff that the beds were very fertile).

This may have explained the reason
why the plants were not growing well early in this season. I finally
had to top dress with chemical fertilizer to boost the plants growth
(I was desperated). I will add more manure to the vegetable garden
when I prepare the soil in this fall.

In my own experience, kitchen scraps make the most fertile compost,
and manure comes in second. ...

I am also playing around the idea of adding kitchen scraps to my leaf
compost piles. Do you have a FAQ on the way to store kitchen scraps
and to use it?


I store them in a trash can outside, mixed with wood chips or leaves,
until they are too decomposed to be of interest to critters. Then I
dump them onto the compost pile, which is mostly leaves, and mix.
Look, leaves are fine. Add a little rock phosphate and wood ash and
kitchen scraps and it will be a powerful concoction, while retaining
the mild pH of leaf mold.