Although the growing season is over, it’s a prime time to use leaves and some garden residue for another type of growing.
In fields and forests, nature does her recycling year after year by decomposing tree leaf, needle and grass droppings. When we do it, it’s called sheet composting.
Many home gardeners don’t want to go to the effort of building and caring for a regular compost pile, but sheet composting is easy and doesn’t take a lot of time. Simply use a garden bed as the composting area, apply a thin layer of organic material to be decomposed and dig it in.
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Picking what to use is important because the high heat attending normal compost piles will be absent. Stay away from old, ground-drop fruits and mildewed or diseased tomato branches.
The most plentiful supply of raw material is fallen leaves. They are basically “clean” for garden use. Leaves can provide the carbon-rich half of the compost equation, and green grass clippings plus some supplemental nitrogen from commercial fertilizer or organic PDW (dried poultry waste) will balance out the rest. The decay-producing organisms are present in your soil but can be increased with one of the special compost additives on the market.
Leaves or any other organic matter will break down much faster if applied in small pieces. Running the lawn mower, especially a mulching type, over small piles of the matter will help chop it up. Placing leaves in a garbage can and shredding them also works.
Spread the raw material evenly over the top of the bed and distribute the fertilizer over it. Dig the material into the soil and water thoroughly. Over the winter, the fertilizer will provide the energy needed to stimulate organisms to digest the leaf particles.
Perennial beds that can’t be dug will benefit from a fall application of already-composted material. A number of prepared, bagged composts are available, but these are often high in unwanted chemical salts.