[This is from the archives, but it’s the perfect time to pull out this post again]
I hate waste, so autumn drives me kind of crazy. All my neighbours sweep their leaves to the front kerb, where a big borough lorry comes along and sucks them up. Then, in the spring, everyone has a truck load of mulch delivered.
I say: stop the insanity! Use your own leaves to make your own mulch! Build a leaf bin!
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It doesn’t take much. Just a roll of hardware cloth, a piece of scrap wood and a way to fasten them together (I used a cable staple gun that we had lying around.
I bought a 10′ roll of 3′ tall, 1/4″ mesh landscape fabric from the local big hardware store. |
| Step 1: Unroll the hardware cloth and lay it flat on the ground. Stomp on it a bit to get it to unroll if you need to. No need to get it totally flat, though, as you’ll want it to roll up again in a minute. |  |
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Step 2: fold one end of the mesh around the piece of wood (which should be just a bit taller than 3′, so you can bash the end of it into the ground to help support your leaf bin). Staple the mesh to the wood, all along the length. |
| Step 3: Fold the mesh over so the free end is touching the wood. |  |
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Step 4: Staple the end to the wood, as neatly as you can while wrangling 10′ of metal mesh. |
| Step 5: Stand it up. The mesh is strong enough to support itself, but the wood helps. You can then pound the wood into the ground to hold your new leaf bin in place. You can also use metal or wood stakes to define its shape a bit better and give it extra stability. |  |
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Shred your leaves with a lawnmower or a leaf muncher; pile them up and let the microbes save you a pile of money. Know what’s in the mulch you’re putting on your soil (nothing but natural ingredients).