Processing Leaves

Every spring since 2014, I have collected bags of leaves from around the neighborhood, and April is when the most leaves are available. on April 18, 2014, I brought a bunch of bags into my garage and let them sit there until I was ready to shred the leaves with my lawnmower. In 2014, I was putting the shredded leaves back into bags and let them decompose that way. I was able to shove some bags into a raised cabinet in my garage, but beginning in 2015, I piled them in a hardware cloth pen in the back yard.

In that first year, I had a very modest way of shredding the leaves. I would open one bag of leaves and dump the leaves on the grass. Then I would go over it a few times with my mower. Once I felt the leaves were shredded enough, I would put them in a separate pile and get another bag.

One I had done all the shredding I could stand for one day, I would bring out my wet/dry vac and vacuum up all the small particles that had sunk down into the grass. This was the finest, and I guess most valuable product of the shredding.