There are lots of ways to reduce and manage the amount of yard waste you generate, making looking after compost piles easier. Many of these tips are healthy for your garden and beneficial for the environment and the animals that live in our yards and gardens.
- Grasscycling is the process of leaving grass clippings on the lawn, instead of bagging them. Mowing frequently to keep clippings short or using a mower with a mulching blade means that grass clippings rapidly breakdown and add nutrients back into your lawn. This can help reduce the need to use fertilizers and soil additives which can be harmful to the environment and can even help reduce the need for watering as the clippings can help retain water in the soil.
- Leaves do not need to be raked up and disposed of. These can be left on your grass and beds in the fall where they will start to break down. You can help speed this process up by running a mower over leaves to help shred them. By spring, the leaves will be well on their way to becoming part of the soil and feeding your beds and lawns. Any left over leaves can be raked up and used as a mulch on vegetable and flower beds to help suppress weeds.
- Leaving leaves lying is also an excellent way of providing habitat in your garden to help support biodiversity. Many species, including bees, use leaves to overwinter in, and this is essential for providing beneficial insects places to hide away during the colder months.
- Food scraps from the kitchen can easily be composted in an outdoor compost heap and rapidly breakdown for a rich organic fertilizer. There are a number of ways you can speed this up – a worm composter can generate soil and liquid fertilizer and a counter top unit can take food scraps and generate a raw compost in a few hours.
- Waste generated from weeding, from replacing annuals, pruning can all be added to a compost heap and over a few months will provide an organic soil for yards. Sticks, branches and wood can be shredded and added to compost heaps, or, find a quiet corner in your yard to start a branch pile that will form a habitat for insects and other beneficial species that will help attract wildlife such as birds into your yard.
- If you have a lot of sticks, branches and woody debris – crack open a bag of marshmallows and have a campfire! Remember to make sure that backyard burning is allowed, and get yourself a burn permit, but a pile of woody debris is an excellent excuse for summer s'mores! And the ash that is generated is particularly beneficial for balancing acidic soils for some plants, or can be mixed in with a mulch or compost.