Maple Tar Spot infected leaf. Image used with these permissions: Use:Saforrest, Black tar spot on sugar maple, CC BY-SA 3.0
I’ve received a lot of questions about the diseased Maple leaves falling early and whether they’re safe to compost.
I’m terrible at this whole “don’t give an answer right away in order to drag readers along” so here’s the short answer:
If you hot compost, you can compost them.
If not, send the leaves away.
More explanation and information after the jump. Continue reading
All garbage, mostly great for the garden. Image via Shari Weinsheimer, with no copyright, using this CC: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Autumn’s garbage provides a wealth of opportunities for next year’s garden. Not just leaves, but pumpkins and potted plants, too. (But leave the straw bale.)
People often ask how many leaves they should save for their compost pile. It’s the right question to ask, because when making compost if you strike the correct balance of leaves and nitrogen-rich food scraps, you’ll get rich, light, sweet-smelling compost. Get it wrong and your compost may stink terribly or be very slow to decompose.
For each container of food scraps or coffee grounds.
Add twice as many leaves by volume.
So, how many leaves do you need to stockpile to make compost?
