Allotments 4 All

I salvaged about 15 bags of leaves after the council guys had swept them up and bagged them for me  ;).
(Was on the way to plot and they saw me pick up a couple bags - thought they were pulling up to tell me off but they offered to drop off more for me!).   They told me they don't get taken for composting but just get chucked in with all the other rubbish  ???

Anyway - they are currently in red plastic bags.  Is there a good reason for the bags to be black if I keep them in bags?  Otherwise am considering just a chicken wire surround.  Any thoughts?

At Harlow Carr they have a huge teapot made out of chicken wire which is full of leaves. I collected in compost bags last year but when I checked yesterday some of the leaves were quite dry and had not rotted down. I guess with chicken wire you can guarantee they'll get wet, but maybe the warmth of black bags makes them rot down quicker?

Hiya, mme muck, welcome to a4a  ;D
we used black bin liners in 2007, they rotted in about 2 yrs, last year, we put them in a 'dalek' compost bin, they will go in in spring next year..we don't wait until they rot completely, we dig them in or bury them under the carrot and celeriac beds  :)

We got some leaf composter bags from Wyevale & some leaf activator from a little shop we go to.

Thanks - I've got a roll of chicken wire at the plot so I think I'll cobble up a container.

I just read that you can apply the leaves in a thick mulch on the soil, work them in a bit so not to blow away, and they'll be nice and broken down by spring?

Red plastic might not be ultraviolet proof. Blue disintegrates all over the place.

Im a gardener so i get all the leaves i ever want when clearing away leaves at this time of year for my customers. I started last year and made myself a chicken wire mesh enclosure measuring about 6 foot by 4 foot in size and 4 foot high, i left it open to all the elements and now i have the most fantastic black compost (leafmould)...(after sieving out a few woody bits and stones) and have been putting it on my veg beds. Have now started filling up the wire bin again with this autumns leaves.

So in answer to your question i would definatley recommend the wire mesh bins as to make leafmould the leaves need to get thorougly wet to produce mould which in turn breaks the leaves down perfectly.

The best, cheapest and most efficient compost container in the world is the builder's 1 ton sandbag.

Here's how to do it. Moriatis Composting Method

Hey I like that site - will keep my eyes open for the big building bags now  :D

7oaks I was down the plot this morning and made exactly what you recommend - chicken wire enclosure - filled it all up and emptied the red bags.  Came home and there's a council sweeper outside our house bagging more up!    What a waste - they get dumped with the regular rubbish :(

I'll definitely be giving this a go... one of my winter projects is to knock down all my pallet compost heaps that are strewn around my plot adn shift it all to the shed end. Basically there are trees down there (the west end of my plot) and my plot is narrow... having the composters every 5m down the plot made sense when I was delaing with a lot of weeds on a regular basis. It seems like most of those weeds are now history thanks to the plastic mulch and grow thigns in builders bag technique I used so I don't really need quite as many places to put all the stuff I've pulled out.... Those weedroots will be going into black bags behind the shed for a long time, all the "good stuff" is in one heap that doesn't have weedroots in it, I've goit a bunch of stuff (dead and dying squash and bean foliage0 that can go into the heaps, I plan on collecting a lot of leaves up from somewhere with lots of leaves but not too public  to get a couple fo builders bags (of which I have quite a few) the soil that was in the bags will be used across the plot, it contains a lot of manure etc and will just plain improve the soil.... Even if I get another plot next year I'll have a fair few bags spare so I can really go to town on the using them as heaps idea and I can use the pallets as fencing for them..... hurrah....

chrisc

A chicken wire cage is definately the way to go, but because I'm too tight to buy any I keep my council bags piled up behind my shed.  ;D ;D ;D