As we quickly approach November and the portion of the year when things are mostly bare and brown instead of lush and green, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about things we homesteaders can do with all those fallen leaves that will help our general productivity over time.

We were gifted with one of those noisy, gasoline powered leaf blowers a few months ago when a friend moved from the countryside back into town and had no further use for it. Made me chuckle considering the fact that we live in the middle of the southern Appalachian forest – “thick” by anyone’s standards – and have enough fallen leaves to drive most towns crazy. Worse, living where we do we also get fairly regular fires that love nothing better than a good thickness of dead leaves to burn. I’ve learned through the years that the low-level “brush fires” that don’t burn much other than the leaf fall and a few scraggly saplings are actually good for the forest. So long as they don’t manage to get hot enough to engulf trees. Heck, most of the mature trees can (and have) survive the ground fires just fine, a bit blacker around the trunks than they used to be. And kudzu, of course, loves fire. Always comes roaring back twice as thick as before, and does way more than its share of eating forest trees, engulfing dead cars and stray cattle herds overnight.

Anyway, we feel a need to keep the approximately two acres immediately surrounding the cabin (including fruit orchard and grape vines) as clear of leaves as possible to help prevent any brush fires from getting close enough to do major damage. That means we have a hefty collection of leaf and garden rakes that go to work in November and continue on the job for as long as it takes in decent weather to accomplish that task before the winter snows come along to blanket everything until spring. There are several things to do with those leaves.

When raking them down from the ridge or across the disc golf fairways I always drag along a weathered plastic tarp that has seen better days. That way when the pile of leaves gets big enough to become difficult, I can simple spread out the tarp and rake the leaves onto it, then pick up its edges and drag it on down to the garden. In order to keep the actual leaf-clearing going, I simply dump out the tarp against the fence on the bottom tier of the garden near the compost bins and go back for more. When that tier has at least a foot of leaves on it, I start on the tier above. And of course add leaves to the compost bins themselves.

As the winter progresses the leaves are compacted and self-composted on the beds, are easily turned into the soil in the spring as organic matter to enrich the beds. When the compost bin leaves are turned in with the rest of the garden leavings and kitchen scraps (and mixed every 2nd or 3rd year with some composted chicken droppings or donkey barn leavings), it makes fine mulch to apply once the seedlings are a foot tall or so, to keep weeds down while fertilizing.

A thick mulch of leaves around the fruit trees out to the drip line is always good too, and around the grape vines. This will need to be scattered with crushed limestone in the spring so it gets well watered-in, but it’s good mulch/fertilizer by the time it’s good and black. If there’s a lot of leaf fall, I usually stack it in big piles next to the fence by the compost bins and cover with those leaky tarps to hold it in place. The garden is well away from the edge of the forest, and if there’s a fire in the spring that threatens the perimeter, my piles are close enough to be able to spray with water.

I have found that covering the beds with a foot or two of leaves has led to a filthy soil that works easily and doesn’t need tilling but once every few years. I do that the years when I’m adding animal leavings for nitrogen, and/or limestone to balance the acidity. The beds get so soft that I have to lay down planks to walk on while planting, or I’ll sink right on in. Makes planting easy too, at least for the crops that I start from seed indoors in February and plant out as seedlings in March. Just dig a little hole with a hand-spade and stick ‘em in.

My Aunt used to grow the most spectacular flower beds in her neighborhood. Her secret was to put the leaf fall into black plastic garbage bags and line those up against the back fence. She left them open until after a good rain, then twisted the tops and secured them. By spring the leaves inside the bags had turned to black mulch, and she’d empty that into her wheelbarrow and use it to thickly mulch her flower beds. She told me she never added any amendments, which I would have thought necessary because hardwood leaves tend to be somewhat acidic, but she said the flowers love it, so there was never a reason for MiracleGro™ or animal manure.

Some places out in the country still allow leaf burning, but that seems a waste to me. Sure, ashes are also good amendments to garden soil, but since we heat with wood we’ve always got plenty of those. Besides, burning causes air pollution, and sometimes ends up with the VFD showing up unexpectedly.

Some people shred their leaves before composting. And I admit a chipper-shredder would have been a more useful present than that leaf blower we’ll never use for anything but special storm effects in home movies. Shredding can speed up the process of decomposition greatly, but a big enough pile wetted down and covered with dark tarp (or put into black plastic bags) will decompose by spring into black mulch just fine without shredding. The leaves in the compost bins proper will be well-composted even quicker by greenwaste and kitchen scraps and earthworms – of which my bins are chock full. I’m only slightly concerned about a lack of direct sunlight on the bins since a peach tree decided to grow out of the bin and looks way too healthy to cut (we LIKE peaches!), but I’ll work around that.

So. The trees will be nearly bare in a couple of weeks, so don’t bother raking now when more leaves are still scheduled to fall. Once they’re done, get busy fire-proofing your acreage and transporting those leaves to where they’ll do the most good. Your garden soil will thank you for it, I promise!

Earth Day 2011 is officially marked for Friday, April 22. There are events scheduled all over the place, through the Earth Dar organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In my region – the Southeast – there are a host of events planned in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and elsewhere, but in my own neighborhood [North Carolina} the closest event takes place downtown Asheville in conjunction with the WMCA, where grandson works. The focus will be healthy living (and a lot of fun and games. And music!). I encourage readers to check on events in their area, or renew their efforts to ‘green’ the planet within their own circles by sponsoring community gardens or joining a CSA or helping populate a local tailgate farmer’s market.

While I need to go ahead and plant potatoes and corn this week despite the continuing plume of errant radiation still coming from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, today I’d like to talk about resources for community gardens. There are often grants available from community funds, corporate set-asides and governmental agencies that can help establish community gardens. For homesteaders offering or hoping to offer CSA memberships or Agritourism adventures, it can be a great promotional asset to be part of such a project in your local town, especially in conjunction with your homesteading neighbors.

A good community garden helps to educate people in your wider community – potential steady customers in the ‘Local Foods’ initiatives homesteaders everywhere are involved with – and encourages people of all ages to get their hands dirty, spend some time in the fresh air getting exercise, and get involved with the details of how food is grown and protecting it from harmful pollution. Gardening can open minds and hearts. It fosters a sense of belonging among diverse people who might otherwise not know each other, and gives people a good reason to pay more attention to healthy diets, sustainable food production, and freeing themselves of some of the ‘hidden’ carbon footprints that come with our modern factory-farmed and petroleum-dependent food supply.

The American Community Gardening Association has a wealth of information about how to start and maintain a community garden, with an entire section of resources to help pay the development costs. Never forget that communities have resources of their own in the form of unused municipal land, church and civic groups, social and business clubs, children’s and youth programs, etc. that can be put to good use.

The Municipal Research and Services Center also offers good advice, instructions and resources for those who wish to start a community garden. Many of these resources are sources of funding for such projects above and beyond what you may be able to receive from local and state sources.

The Garden Web forums offer an opportunity to connect with people all over the country engaged in the same kind of projects, and learn from their experience as well as ask questions and get answers from people who know what they’re talking about.

In the end there are lots of things people can do to mark Earth Day and express some support for the idea of a cleaner, healthier planet. But getting directly involved with the kind of ongoing projects that bring home the message of Earth Day 365 days a year can be a lot more satisfying. We who strive to be as independent and self-reliant as possible in this age of ever-increasing dependence on corporations and faceless governmental bureaucrats have been leading the way all along. Some of us came to our chosen earth friendly lifestyles early on, some of us are just starting out. But as always, it’s the mindful decision to do it that counts most of all. The more we share that mindfulness with others who may be so confused by the valuelessness of 21st Century America, the more small steps are made toward reclaiming the close relationship with the natural world that is our birthright.

The official theme of this year’s Earth Day is “A Billion Acts of Green.” People all over the world are pledging to plant trees, clean up waterways, use less electricity, recycle more. buy local… you get the picture. Every little – and large – thing we can do to help others take the first steps down the Green Road helps. We have made our own personal decisions and acted upon them. Don’t ever discount the influence such things have on the more timid and tentative. Each person can make a difference in this world, through each person we touch. So get busy reaching out to your community!

Links:

Earth Day 2011
American Community Gardening Association
Municipal Research and Services Center
Garden Web

I don’t know about you, but I pick up junked tires that other people dump off the side of mountain roads in my county – usually along with assorted junked appliances and badly bagged household trash – and take them with me when I do the monthly trash run to our local Inconvenient Center. I call it that instead of its own self-title of “Convenient Center” because it’s damned IN-convenient. They put all their dumpsters inside a compound with high chain link topped by barbed wire and guarded by a grizzled old grouch (and his junkyard dog) who seem to really hate the idea that people have trash and recyclables to responsibly dispose of, which is only open 3 days a week when almost all of us are actually out working honest jobs instead of hauling our own trash.

Anyway, there is a corner of the inconvenient center devoted to junked appliances and tires, which supposedly get recycled at some point (though I’ve never noticed the piles to go down any). Better to have those big junk items at the center than on the roads and hillsides. They never biodegrade, they are breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and they look really nasty. So, you might have been wondering, how exactly do they recycle things like the 190 million car, truck and equipment tires tossed every year in this nation, and what COULD be done with them?

My friend Vito over at RideLust has asked the obvious question, based on a recycling technology that could actually be of some great use and wouldn’t spread West Nile Fever. It’s called Rubberized Asphalt Concrete [RAC], and it would not only give us better, longer lasting road surfaces, it would save us a whole heck of a lot of petroleum dependence!

Now, used tires can be used as fuel, even though burning tires are terrible air pollutants. They could be re-capped and used again on vehicles, but retreads are notoriously subject to blowing apart at highway speeds, killing more people than cheap tires are ever going to be worth. Some of the plusses Vito lists for RAC are:

• Reduces road noise by as much as 85%
• A 2-inch layer of RAC can save $50K per lane mile over conventional asphalt.
• RAC can prevent cracks in the underlying pavement.
• RAC retains its color better than conventional asphalt and markings remain more visible.
• RAC saves on maintenance costs and can last 50% longer than standard asphalt.
• RAC provides better traction and can reduce traffic accidents in poor weather conditions.

Whoa! Something better, cheaper, safer… what’ll they think of next? Any ideas on how to convince government bid-takers to go with a preference for RAC over conventional asphalt for paving would be appreciated, just put ‘em in the comments. Do drop in on RideLust, and check out the other links below for good uses of this tire scurge!

Links:

RideLust: Where’s the Rubberized Asphalt Concrete?
RideLust: Asphalt is Oil
Used Tires and Pistachio Shells Can Clean Up Pollution
EPA: Solid Waste Management
The Use of Used Tires in Water Systems
Snow Chain Made of a Used Tire