I spread them across various beds and future beds and watered them a bit to try to keep them home. My big worry is that I don't have anything "green" to add in order to help the leaves decompose some during the winter.

If anyone has some suggestions, I'd really love to hear them. Thanks!

Most Starbucks seem to provide grounds for gardeners, but not around here they don't. But there is a little local place that saves them for me, and I get at least 5 gallons a week there. That's my primary nitrogen source through winter.

Karen

My neighbor tills fall leaves into his soil. He's got a very nice garden.

You might need to cover your pile/windrow with a plastic sheet to keep them from blowing away and drying out. You can use fresh chicken/horse/cow manure to mix with the leaves to compost.

I run leaves through my Mackissic Mighty Mac 12PT10 chipper/shredder and heap them up for the compost bin.

Coffee grounds, used teabags, vegetable & fruit scraps, & the old reliable cow & horse poo are all wonderful sources of nitrogen.

Have fun!

Karen

...Just kidding. I know you wouldn't really do it, but just so you know, I'm not that barbaric, either. As another person said, I mow mine into the lawn. If you run them over enough times, you probably won't even know they were there. The small pieces settle into the grass and disappear by spring.

Do you drink coffee? If you have left over coffee, you could pour it on the leaves, provided that you could do it in a makeshift bin of some sort, and I'm sure that will help those leaves to break down a lot faster. Just a thought.

OMGosh! Hehehe. I can picture the headlines now. And this used to be such a quiet neighborhood :)

Actually, everyone's suggestions have opened up my mind, and I can't thank y'all enough.

Our mower doesn't have a bagger, but I could figure out some sort of shield for the discharge chute so stuff would go into a windrow instead of all over the place.

I do make a small pot of coffee for my husband and normally pitch the filter and grounds into the garden. It never occurred to me to include the coffee as well. Great idea. I'm thinking of finding some sort of crock to take to work for collecting grounds and coffee there, too.

That made me wonder about the whey that's left over when I make cheese. For every gallon of milk/one pound of cheese, there are 3 to 3 1/2 quarts of whey left. That's far more than I generally use up in a week (for cooking), so it gets pitched.

The cheese making site I use says: "Whey contains lactose, protein, vitamins, and minerals along with traces of fat. Because it digests very rapidly, the amino acids enter the blood stream faster than other protein sources. ... Some people like to soak their grains and beans in whey. Others make it into lemonade by filtering it and adding sweetener. It may also be used as soup stock or to replace liquids in recipes. Acid loving plants such as tomatoes thrive on whey. At the very least, you can compost it."

So, though I haven't a clue about the C:N ratio of whey, I'll hazard a guess that it's lower than that of fall leaves. I'll also hope the trace of fat doesn't foul things up for me :)

Lastly, a colleague loaned me his chipper/shredder to try out. It's been snowing today and supposed to continue through the weekend, but maybe I'll get to try it sometime soon anyway.

Thank you all again for all the help!

I'm very impressed by the fine texture resulting - more impressed by how small the 12' x 12' x 4' pile was reduced - filled up one of my vacant 4' cube bins. I'll incorporate it into a couple of my active compost bins later.

My question to any compost shredders with similar machines:
Have you found a faster method of feeding large quantities of leaves into the hopper? It took me over two hours - feeding the dry leaves in (relatively) small batches, stopping so many times to push the material into the flail drum w/a thick branch.

Never shredded a sweatshirt :) but, I did have to shut down the machine during the last use, after hearing a very loud clanking noise - even through my ear protection. The steel battery hold-down bracket must have worked loose and fallen into the adjacent leaf pile and fed into the hopper w/o my knowing. I removed the battery for recharging last time I used it, starts on 1st or 2nd pull anyway, so elec. start is not really needed.

The beast actually chewed the metal into little molten metal bits . . . so hot they ignited the shredded leaves, which I quickly stomped out. I was surprised to find no wear at all on the flail hammers.

Thanks also to beeman for the cornmeal tip and northerner for the trenching in the garden idea. I'm trying a cover crop in the garden this winter, so I hate to disturb that area right now, but I'm inspired to be more organized next year.

We were in Lowe's this afternoon and stopped to look over the chipper/shredder selection. The salesman didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. Maybe it's a good thing that I didn't ask how his Troy-Bilt handles sweatshirts and and battery brackets :)

mrs. b, I'm actually holding off on the urine thing, myself because I don't want to find myself going to the bathroom in a bucket for the rest of my life.