Autumn Leaves - Blow Then Suck

On my less than .5 acre/2,024sq meters of property stand 10 large trees. Half are in my front yard. There is a beech, an ash a dogwood, hickory and a huge Norway Maple. The leaves that fall from these trees are vital to the my composting for the garden.

To start the composting process, I blow the leaves into piles. The leaves are then vacuumed, which shreds them as they pass the impeller inside the blower/vacuum. They are then hauled out to the back yard and dumped into the compost pile.

I started about noon to collect the leaves one bright and warm November day. Four hours later, I had the leaves from the main portion of my front yard blown into a serpentine pile across the lawn. 

There were also two piles in the road that I hoped wouldn't be blown away by the vehicular traffic. Big trucks, especially, have a way of relocating leaves. My back ached and my hand was showing signs of a blister. That was it for me until morning.

In the morning I changed the leaf blower over to a vacuum. The part of the blower that took in air the day before became the part that took in leaves. The part of the blower from which blew air would blow leaves.

Originally when I purchased the leaf blower/vacuum, a shoulder bag was supplied to collect the shredded leaves. A bag that became heavier as it filled with shredded leaves. The collection bag soon became cumbersome. If I needed to change hands, which happens often, I also needed to change shoulders. The bag needed to be emptied frequently, too, because it didn't hold that much volume. 

I didn't put up with that for very long. I returned to the home improvement store, from which I purchased the blower/vacuum, to look for an alternative to the shoulder bag collection method. There I found a different manufacturer had a collection kit that included a length of flexible hose connected to a cloth that fit over the opening of a trash can.

Here is how it works. The blower vacuums the leaves, shreds them and sends them through the flexible tubing depositing them into an upright trash can. A can that could support all the weight. It would also hold five times the volume of the shredded leaves as would the shoulder bag. That meant there was five times less emptying of the bag. Pretty simple. I bought the kit.

Leaf Vacuum System

There was one problem. The parts from the two manufactures weren't compatible. I had to jury rig them to work together. That was taken care of with the help of duct tape.

I put the two openings together - hose to vacuum. Two long strips of tape were placed 180º around the tube from each other across the joint. Then several longer strips were placed radially around the tube and vacuum to create the seal and hold down the initial two strips. It has worked for over ten years, so far.

In four hours the serpentine pile and one of the piles in the road were vacuumed, shredded, hauled to the back yard and dumped into the waiting bin. Shredding the leaves sure does reduce the volume. It also accommodates and speeds their composting.

The next step is to get bacteria to do their job making compost.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

ABC 6 Action News, Maybe

Last winter, during a winter snow storm while I was shoveling snow from my driveway, I looked up to see my neighbor, from directly across the road, carrying a huge video camera crossing the road in my direction. He has a position with a company that produces the intro to the news programs at the ABC-TV affiliate in Philadelphia.

He requested my permission to video me for the intro that may be used winter of next year. I gave my permission and he recorded me as I shoveled. He directed I throw the snow in his direction as I smiled. I was already breathing and shoveling and he was requesting me add two more actions? I agreed to try. 

At that time I was wearing a fleece ski cap, a fleece jacket, fleece gloves and a fleece neck gaiter. The only flesh visible was between the top of the neck gaiter covering my lips and my eyebrows. I don't think anyone, not even close family members, will recognize me as the shoveler when seen on TV.

Yesterday, as I used my electric leaf blower to gather leaves in my front yard into piles, I looked up to see the same neighbor crossing the road in my direction with the huge video camera. He had been out and about looking for people doing fall activities. He captured every fall activity except one. All he needed was someone blowing leaves. There I was blowing leaves. Kismet.

If this clip is included in the intro next autumn,  I believe people will recognize me. I wasn't wearing a cap, jacket, gloves or neck gaiter. They'll see the top of my old balding head, my fat face and big belly. Undeniably me.

I was directed to stand behind the collected elongated leaf pile and sweep the blower left to right and back as I blew the leaves. The leaves fluttered to rest atop the pile. Several times my neighbor gave me hand signals and I saw his lips moving. Each time I turned off the blower to hear his directions- bigger sweeps, faster, slower, smile, look directly at the camera. I tried by hardest. Whether I met his expectations or wore him down, he claimed we were finished.

I stopped my neighbor as he started off towards home. I turned the tables and asked permission to photograph him for my blog. He agreed. That's what neighbors are for.

I will need to wait until next autumn to see if this clip is included in ABC-TV 6 News intro. That's a whole year. I may be dead by then. Of course, the snow shoveling clip captured last winter is due out the Monday before the winter solstice. I should be around for that.


©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Monochrome Garden Textures

Here are a few monochrome textures I collected in my garden mid-May.

Hosta

Hosta

Hosta

Hosta

Hosta

Oregano - Origanum vulgare

Hosta

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Square Foot Garden Plot Prep

I planned to plant my first seeds into my square foot garden on St. Patrick's Day.  That day came and went and no seeds were planted.  There was still plenty of work to do on the plot.


At the end of last growing season I covered the plot with shredded tree leaves that fell on the lawn in the front of my house. Most of the leaves were from Ash, Norway Maple and Copper Beech trees.  I reversed my leaf blower to suck the leaves through the blower where they were shredded and deposited into a 40 gallon/151 liter trash can.  I then carried the leaves to my backyard and dumped them onto my square foot plot.

This is the square foot plot covered with shredded tree leaves on 14 March 2012

I placed an old tarp on the concrete patio surface to keep from staining the concrete.  I then shoveled the shredded leaves onto the tarp.  You can see the depressed soil in the plot.

There were approximately 1.75 cu yds/254.85 liters of leaves piled upon the plot in late Oct 2011

I used two different shovels for this project.  A pointed spade and a square mouthed shovel.  Both have long handles.  I don't like the shorter D handled shovels.  My back pleads with me not to use them.

The pointed spade is used when digging into a pile or into the soil.  The pointed end cuts better than the square end.  The square mouthed shovel is used on smooth hard surfaces, like the concrete of the patio or for straightening/smoothing the walls of a hole.

As you can see the shredder didn't do the best job of turning the leaves into small pieces.  My leaf blower/leaf shredder is over 10 years old and the plastic blade is most likely dull.  These clumps of leaves must be broken up.  The leaves will not break down if they are left in clumps.

I loosened the soil in the plot.  Using the pointed spade, the soil remained in clumps held together with roots from last years plants.  Break up these soil clumps, too.  It is not necessary to remove the roots.

I placed a few shovels full of leaves on an empty part of the tarp.

I then placed a layer of plot soil atop the pile of leaves.  I continued to layer the two components until I had a lasagna-like pile on the tarp.  I mixed the pile until it was as homogeneous as possible.  Making sure the leaves are coated with the clay or sand and no clumps of any kind remain.  I then shoveled that pile into the square foot plot.

  I keep making lasagna piles until I had enough soil to raise the bed about 1'/30 cm above the lawn part of my yard.  If you can call that green surface a lawn.  I then soaked the soil until it was really, really damp.  The fact that the bed is raised, compared to the bed last year, means I won't have the drainage problem I had last May when the rains came for days on end and I lost quite a few of my plants.

To compare the soil structure with my last soil test, I filled the same container 1/3 full of the new soil mix.

  I then filled the container with water, leaving about 1"/ 2.5 cm air at the top in order to help mixing the soil and water into a suspension.

As you can see from these two side by side containers, there is much more organic matter in the container on the right.

I found this little guy in my first shovelful of soil from the square foot plot.  Earth worms will eat the organic matter added to the soil leaving behind nutrients more readily available to the plants.  They also aerate as they borrow thorough the soil leaving channels for water flow.

An interesting fact about earthworms is that there were no earthworms in the Americas until the voyages to the new world with and after Columbus.  The earthworms hitchhiked from Europe in the earth loaded into the ships as ballast which was later unloaded onto the soil in the Americas.

You can hear about that in the book 1493, Columbus Shaped The World To Be, Charles C. Mann

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved