I've gotten advice that you should shred leaves before putting them in your compost, however, I don't have a shredder and can't afford to buy one. Is shredding necessary? Can we just put the dried leaves into a bag and stomp all over them? :-)
Yes, that would work fine, as long as you make them damp again before composting. Dry stuff won't compost.
Do you have a lawn trimmer? You can put the leaves in a large garbage bin and use the lawn trimmer to break down the leaves in there.
They will just take longer to decompose. You can run back and forth over them with a lawn mower. It will help make them smaller. The smaller the better.
I wondered if the lawn mower might be all right. We have a mulching mower, but if leaves wouldn't hurt it, we could try. The trimmer idea is good as well.
shreadding the leaves provide more surface area for the composting microbe to degrade the stuff. The composting process complete faster. adding effective microbe assist the process
So I could put whole leaves into the pile and I'd still get compost but it would take much longer? Do you have any idea how much longer it would take?
It tooks 4 month to degrade all my empty fruit bunch from oil palm. but i used effective microbe and worm to do the job. as for the leaves, it might take lesser period. To fastern the process, I put the whole unshreadded leaves into big plastic bag, wet them with effective microbe and tight sealed. within 2 weeks all turn black.
I'm in NE Ohio. I don't need to actually use the compost until next year, so I don't mind a slower process. Do you think in my region it could take a year if I don't shred the leaves?
Probably the best part of a year, yes. If you stomp the leaves and get them started now, they should be ready by the end of the summer though.
