Madgardener wrote:

...If you scrounge 19 overstuffed bags of leaves two years ago and pile them up
in an out of way space, will they compost over that period of time into
black humus? The answer is...




maybe. It takes water to support the composting process. If the bag of
leaves was dry, it will remain a bag of dry leaves for a very long time.

alright, it's a possible maybe. These were your ordinary trash bags of a
gray color, some were the black variety. They had laid under the deck two
years and deteriorated enough that water and earthworms had worked their way
inside. I'm not talking commercial grade trash bags here
Dwight...........g I'm just saying yer average inexpensive garbage or
trash bag will over a year or two give up leaves and such to compost. This
isn't the first time I've had this happen to scrounged bags I didn't get to
and open up. It's almost always done this with exception to one or two bags
that indeed were still just dried leaves. But to go into MORE detail, I
dumped over 40 orange yard bags of leaves in a compost pile in my former
yard in Nashville one fall that rose to a height of six feet and three years
later, you could dig down to a foot and find perfectly pressed and untouched
leaves. Lack of air, despite the cold weather, rains and time didn't touch
that pile in the bottom because it was compacted.
madgardener
"Dwight Sipler" wrote in message
...
Madgardener wrote:

...If you scrounge 19 overstuffed bags of leaves two years ago and pile
them up
in an out of way space, will they compost over that period of time into
black humus? The answer is...




maybe. It takes water to support the composting process. If the bag of
leaves was dry, it will remain a bag of dry leaves for a very long time.

Madgardener wrote:

alright, it's a possible maybe. These were your ordinary trash bags of a
gray color, some were the black variety. They had laid under the deck two
years and deteriorated enough that water and earthworms had worked their way
inside...


I recommend taking them out of the bag. It's easier to take leaves out
than compost. True, you lose some by the wind blowing them away, but I
think there's a net loss of work involved...






I'm not talking commercial grade trash bags here
Dwight...........g I'm just saying yer average inexpensive garbage or
trash bag will over a year or two give up leaves and such to compost. This
isn't the first time I've had this happen to scrounged bags I didn't get to
and open up...



I guess if I read down fast enough or far enough I would see that you
followed my suggestion long before I made it. PS: a lot of communities
are now collecting leaves in paper bags for composting. They just stack
up the bags and probably use a bulldozer to move them around (areate and
uncompact them). The paper composts also.





... I
dumped over 40 orange yard bags of leaves in a compost pile in my former
yard in Nashville one fall that rose to a height of six feet and three years
later, you could dig down to a foot and find perfectly pressed and untouched
leaves. Lack of air, despite the cold weather, rains and time didn't touch
that pile in the bottom because it was compacted....


I have the same problem. Landscapers bring me leaves, which they dump
and I scrape up into a pile. They sit there a year or so and then I roll
the pile (with a tractor) to another location. That's my answer to
turning a pile 10' high and 75' long. About 25% of the time I come
across dry leaves, but the rest of it gets started composting. It takes
a couple of years this way.

I used to fill up the bags with the leaves, then use them to mulch the roses. In
spring I would haul them out of the way, make a hole, run the hose into them, then
flatten them stick em in teh sun but out of the way and had compost by the next year.
Ingrid


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you gotta stop teasing me with tales of piles 10'X 75' Dwight. all this
drool is messing up m' keyboards. (bad enough I step over Miz Mary's
electric fence her BIL put around her back yard to keep his cows in where
they now graze to pick up cowpies.......g
madgardener
"Dwight Sipler" wrote in message
...

I have the same problem. Landscapers bring me leaves, which they dump
and I scrape up into a pile. They sit there a year or so and then I roll
the pile (with a tractor) to another location. That's my answer to
turning a pile 10' high and 75' long. About 25% of the time I come
across dry leaves, but the rest of it gets started composting. It takes
a couple of years this way.