Nature gives us a gift and we treat it badly……. Lets stop. When a tree sheds its leaves, we must remember that it is giving us a gift.

The gift of nutrients that you can use to make more life grow.

How to use the Leaf Composters

Sweep up your dried leaves – during the season when they fall, you will get huge amounts. Dried leaves are truly a valuable natural resource! They contain 50 to 80 percent of the nutrients a plant extracts from the soil and air during the season. Therefore, leaves should be managed and used rather than hauled to landfills.

Put the collected dried leaves into the Leaf Composter. You can use any container that is large and will allow aeration. A Bamboo and Terracotta Leaf Composter is shown here.

Add water and wet the leaves well. This will begin the decomposition process and also safeguard the pile from catching fire. Adding water also compacts the pile and allows you to fill in a lot of leaves.

Leaves need to be wet – therefore using a porous container is good, this will allow the excess water to drain off.

Harvest this half done leaf mulch after 8 – 10 months.

You can still recognise the forms of the leaves. Don’t worry, store this rich resource in a gunny sack and keep watering it. You can also mix into soil to improve soil structure.

Use it to dress plants to avoid loss of moisture and prevent weeds from growing.

Other tips

Hastening the decomposition.


You can add a lot of kitchen waste sometimes to hasten decomposition. But this could attract rats if not managed well. Try and add the waste in the morning and stir it in well.	Add a mixture of cowdung and cow urine to help accelerate the decompostion if you like	Stir the pile once a month to allow aeration.

What about large bits and the palms?


You can add twigs and cuttings. Make sure you break them down into smaller bits. Palm fronds are best cut into smaller bits and then put into the mulch bin.



What do you do with very large stalks of palms and fallen trees?


When you drive outside the city, you must have noticed how neatly the farmers stack fallen logs, coconut fronds, coconut frond stems, old coconut shells, hay, firewood etc. In our cities the fallen branches, fronds and shells are all great fuel for construction labourers or other people who can use it as fuel to cook their evening meal. These if collected and stored in one space on a street for people to use will be the best use of this resource instead of sending it to landfill. The Street Fuel Center – a service to help people eat. Think of some corporate bold enough to sponsor this and of course a municipal commissioner forward thinking enough to see all material as a resource and nothing as waste in a city.