On Mon, 02 May 2005 02:19:39 GMT, msterspy
wrote:

I live in the Boston area and I have about 5 oak trees and two pines.
I get a lot of leaves and I recently contracted a guy to move all of
the leaves to the rear corner of the yard. $300 for probably 1/2 day
work. Everything is expensive in the Boston area. Anyway, it would be
very costly to have the leaves carted off to the dump. The yard slopes
away form the house and it would be cost a lot more to remove the
pile.
I would like to add something like lime to speed up the decompostion.
Is this a good plan? Is there any other beter way to speed up the
proceess. There will be a huge pile of leaves and it builds up every
year.


A powerful backpack blower can do job easily. You can get a new blower
for about $400 (don't go cheap here). You need a 5HP shredder, ear
protection and a dust mask too. Heap the ground up leaves into a pile
near your garden. Mix in some green lawn clippings. Next year you'll
have black gold. I have 150 trees and can move all the leaves into a
pile in about 3 hours. Using just a rake is a 2-day job.