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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2012-12-03
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9OhxKlrWwc
what did Jack Abu said that if you bring a leaf blower on stage in the first act you have to use it by the third act good timing for this a bad is so appropriate were here in the fall and I'm going to talk to you about com a lot of people schedule composting talks in grinning a lot of people start come spring they buy a
compost and along with the big income detailed instructions which are about the size of any court and it says on one side things you can include grass clippings leads kitchen waste of old news papers your junk mail on the other side of things you should not include blogging cat feces old car batteries people people who need to go for a ride behind the Philadelphia airport and
get you know the fishes the marshes better don't compost and so well meaning people will get a compost bin in this brand and we'll fill it with their kitchen garbage and says it's right there on the front of the card you can compost your kitchen garbage so they fill the calm poster with kitchen garbage and they're very happy with themselves Al Gore is somewhere giving them
gold stars and we are waiting in there waiting and at the end of the C. then they take the calm poster off and they have a big pile of kitchen garbage share it has not improved in quality in any way over the summer and that's the big lie of composting people calling to composting get karma points they want to stop throwing away their kitchen garbage and
you can stop throwing away your kitchen garbage but composting is an imitation of nature and %HESITATION nature does not make a big piles of trash and garbage out in the woods and neither should you so this is the perfect time of year to start composting thanks to our trees if anything will save us its trees train from the original solar panels every year every season the
roots of trees reach down deeper into the ground and they went the for pulling up nutrients pulling up trace minerals that the roots couldn't reach the year before they send them up to the carribean where the leaves that contain these nutrients are super charged by photosynthesis doubling and tripling the nutritional content and then because nature realizes were a little slow at the end of the summer
drop school leads down act or feet below look at me here I am on my end nutrient dense so what does the average American man he blows all these nutrient dense material onto his neighbors driveway the neighbor comes out blows the league's back onto the other neighbor's driveway now this is not meaningless this is not wasted time here we have two American men were being occupied
who otherwise might get into real serious mischief but eventually even an American man is going to realize Harry and I've been blowing these leaves around for three months and is still on the ground so that's when the American man digs out the rate and then it goes to the hardware store or home despot and buys SIP beams stupid people bags which are brown paper bags Dick
telling your neighbors %HESITATION tune done to save mine leaves on pay extra to throw the man so that's the first lesson today ask peen bees are like unattended pans dirty yours if there's no one around to protect the pen it belongs to you same thing for leaves put out at the curbside this is everything you're going to need for your garden I guarantee you will never
get to the end of the gardening season and go boy I wish I had fewer leads juried made less complex so don't be afraid to rustle up S. P. bees but as the leaves calm down these tools can become valuable because if it means American men would look in their garage or their basement there's probably a box with the conversion kit and I think it's called
the conversion kit because when you is this part you finally get religion you can replace W. lower with the vacuum and nailed the most aptly named power pool in the history of America no longer blows you can use it you suck up your lead virtually every electric leaf blower comes with one of these again you can have both there's guys web leaf blowers were fifteen years
old these are admit condition based and the collection bag hang it from your shoulder and the first thing you will notice as you use this to rustle up your leads is there is no benefit bending is for chumps if you are doing hard work while gardening you're not paying attention you stand up you suck up nearly inside everyone of these machines and the nice thing is
these things to become even better over the years even be able to see if there's a metal empowering here a metal wheel so as you stock up the leaves they get shredded and dropped into the collection bag take the leaves out of the collection bag you can use those to mulch your garden beds right away preventing any weeds that would form of winter in in the
spring but what you should do with your first run of leaves is make a big pile and he asked the big question is always do well I have to shred mind leads and the answer is yes whole wings have a tendency to mac down and do a darn good imitation of the tower what people don't realize about trees trees are not been gnawing trees are solar
collectors trees give us everything we need to have a fabulous garden the following year but trains are bowling's trees do not want any competition when they dropped their leaves yes they're preparing themselves for winter there sealing off the parts of themselves that the damage by cold but they're also smothering all the little children on the forest floor of they are making sure that there can a
block you have to be a good flat to be able to survive leaf fall no overtime in the woods with way and in year in winter those sleeves get shredded but when they're first put down they are competitions smother rumors so we want to avoid doing the same thing so the only thing we have to do with our leaves is shred them and if all you
do you shred up nearly moves put them in a contains Benny can be as simple as a big wiring closure you can be fancy dancy com poster you Bahmai it can be X. humbler or it can be your alternate the cages are worked out a sequence where by this time a year %HESITATION first of all the stink bugs have been violating my teammate is for the
past two weeks so I'm sick of looking at that corner and it's also time to be done with to make these say take your automated cages get rid of the tomato plants you can leave them in place put them something else just start filling shredded leaves at the end of the fall make sure you shredded up enough leaves to fill up everything like this because again
you'll never get to the spring wishing dawn walks now it may seem like a scam in the beginning because the leaves will shrink down in size by the time we get to Christmas your leaf piles will probably be half their size by the time we get to spring will be half again smaller but you still won't sing the compost all you'll see is on shredded planes
and you'll think I'm a fraud we yes I am but not about this specifically the dirty little secret of composting is it's always done on the box wide because that's the least convenient place for us soldiers liftoff needs to made the cages or just take a rate card room if you have a big open pile and very gingerly remove all the lead still look like leads
down at the bar if it's been a freezing cold winter if you've done nothing to move this process along you'll have a beautiful time of rich black compost every agricultural study ever done says it two inches of yard waste compost made with this incredible nutrient dense energy hardest by trees through their leaves is all any plant needs fed and protected from disease for an entire season
two inches of compost that'll take care of an American long that'll take care of your vegetable garden that'll take care of the flower garden I would say you could prove it we make tea out of it and you can bet I wouldn't drink it I would use that if you eat my plants it is everything your garden garden needs now in the spring you'll still have
on composted leaves what are you going to do with us well one of the inconveniences of the fall leaf drop is right believes come down for us to harvest it gets cold as many of us know all too well cold slows down biological process these so you get your lease composting action over the winter if trains were more considerate they would drop their leaves in spread
but they don't but when spring arrives you take those on composted leaves mix them together into a big pile they will come close down very quickly thanks to the warm weather now what do you add to your leads to move things along I had to pick anyone's in Holland I was over there for an agricultural can and Holland will make you realize that Americans know nothing
whose every school child Holland speak sixteen languages fluently and we can barely speak English no that's true I got on a tour boat in Holland %HESITATION and the girl who was doing the chores would speak to everyone in their own language there's a Japanese couple she said she could do Japanese France Germany no problem people in front of us regrets and they said English and then
my friend and I got on the boat and we said English till she goes home sorry argue American and I go yeah what's the difference them without missing a beat she goes all talk faster and slur my words he'll make his big banquet as we're getting ready to close Dale and I have %HESITATION you know they are adopts high schoolgirl he speaks eighteen languages and a
French guy over here and we're trying to converse about compost and she turns to me and goes he wants to know why you don't like your leaves and I got I love my leaves what is he talking about and she goes he says you mixed garbage in with them turns out it means higher frames bedding plant industry their entire system of horticulture is based on what
they call leaf mold alone they collect and shred every leaf they can find just let it sit out don't add anything to it and that's what they use to produce their bedding plants and right so if you're confused about what to add cheers shredded full leaves don't add anything if leaves alone did not compost bin earth would be covered five hundred feet deep in our own
shredded lean everything Roxy's those of us who didn't have been advancing age no long too well Dave will drive shredding them is the only quote unnatural thing you have to do to move the process along don't add your kitchen garbage I realize that is an unpopular statement but your kitchen garbage is cold meaning it has no nitrogen the real dirty little secret of compost is if
you mix up kitchen waste in fall leaves it's only the fall leaves that become the finished compost the right kind of kitchen waste can move the process along small amounts of the wrong kind of kitchen waste won't hurt anything but it is only the leaves that become the compost which is why you must save and shred as many as possible there is one exception one thing
in your kitchen that is like myself full of nitrogen that is really hot they will move the composting process along so also rich in calcium phosphorus and potassium in that coffee grants spent coffee grounds add moisture to the pile they add nitrogen to the pile were you to take the standard Lehigh been developed by JI Rodale at this Ohio University forty two which is a four
foot Q. four foot by four foot by four foot filled out with leaves makes in five to ten pounds of spent coughing grams believe me coffee shops are desperate for you to come in and ask for their coffee grounds mix it all well whoever told you to let your your compost pile failed physics because you don't get a reaction by isolating ingredients you get a reaction
by mixing them mix up those leaves in those coffee grounds you can warm your hands over that time for the next week it will cook it will reduce in size immediately you may get finished compost before the weather gets bad kitchen scraps and get a worm bin I am late to the world of red worms and I'm ashamed I have a warm condo I have owned
risings however worms nail I just as gardens alive to send me for more level some building the society hill towers of one of the towers and all of our colleague kitchen waste is going there and there where worms can turn it into the only material that might even be better than compost nutrient rich warm casting a researcher once said something magical happens inside the god of
war because the material they put out their back end is more nutrient dense than the material they talk in their front at but what ever you do whatever you take away from find a way to shred your leaves say them in plastic bags just won't your garden beds we shredded leaves next spring earthworms will colonize that leaf litter and feed your plans for free make compost
