Shredding and mulching leaves with lawn mower.

I use my exisiting lawn mower to shred leaves.  This answers many questions regarding building or making your own leaf shredder or mulcher.  I have highlighted the steps I do to shred leaves.  My yard is full of oak leaves and this works really good.

Run your lawn mower in discharge mode.  Direction of mower depends upon the discharge side.  Idea is to collect leaves in a pile.  My mower discharge to right so I run it clockwise as shown in figure 1.  The size of the pile depends how many leaves you have.  If you get too many leaves then your mower may start stalling.

Iclose the discharge chute and convert my mower in to mulching mode and run it over the partially shredded leaves pile.  You will be amazed in the reduction in the volume of leaves at this stage.

Once the leaves are completely shredded, I use the bag attachment to collect all the shredded leaves and throw them in my compost.  Easy and simple. I think.

Where to buy Bitter Mellon, Bitter Gourd or Karella (Karela) Seeds?

One of the reader wanted to know where to buy the bitter gourd seeds.  Jawahar Bitter Gourd seed packet are available on internet and these are Indian variety. As per web site, these are Long, green variety, quite bitter and with anti diabetic properties.  Bitter gourd are hard to sprout specially in colder climates.  I was lucky one vine was successful out of 10 seeds.   I bought it from local Korean store.  I grew the seedling inside.  There is another kind of variety of bitter gourd Solok Bitter Gourd.


Try to grow Bitter Melon, Bitter Gourd (Momordica Charanti, Bitter Melon, Karela.

Used tea bags and tea leaves in compost along with egg shells. Tea party in compost.

We are tea lovers and most of the time drink tea instead of coffee.  I collect the used tea bags and tea leaves in a brown lunch bag.  I put some paper napkin on the bottom of the brown bag so that it soaks the liquid.  I did add some egg shells.  No white or yolk.  When ever the weather is nice and I go out for a walk in the yard, I take the brown bag with me and stick the bag in the compost bin.  It should be buried in leaves.  This will keep critters away.  Do not put meat or fish.  In this way you have no odor coming out of compost and you will have clean compost.  To make compost hot add some greens like grass clippings and turn the compost.

Home Grown Vegetables. It is total bliss.

Sharing another picture of sample of home grown vegetables.  This is part of last harvest.  Winter is setting in.  There are still few vegtables on plants.  They may end up in compost.  There is full tray of hot peppers sitting behind.

Home grown vegetables.

Compost Oak Leaves. Shred, add greens and moisture.

We have lot of oak leaves. Oak leaves are tough and they slowly break down.  Best way is to shred them as much as possible.  I ran my lawn mower in mulching mode.  Then ran my Garden Tractor and bagged them.  This job is easier when leaves are dry.  Then emptied the bags of shredded leaves in to my home made compost bins.

Leaves and leaves every where.

Oak leaves are hard, so shred them as much you can.  Add greens to it.  Next time I mow the lawn I wll add the grass clipping to it.  As vegetable season is almost done, I will take the vegetable plants and shred them and add to the compost.  Composting is not hard. 

1.  It should be good mix of brown and greens.  Brown provides the carbon and green provides the nitrogen.

2.  Keep the objetcs smaller for faster decomposing.  So shred the leaves and greens.

3.  Keep it moist but not soggy.  Do not let it dry.

4.  Keep it airy.

Added shreded oak leaves to home made compost bin.

More leaves yet to fall.