North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Ed Mashburn <ribes60@currants.com>]

At 10:05 PM 12/21/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Ed, I have a pile of leaves that I've removed from my lawn for the last
>couple of years (wet, full of worms, but shrinking slowly) and three
>large garbage bags of shredded (lawnmower) leaves from this fall.  I put
>a lot of shredded leaves on the blueberries to mulch them, but was
>afraid they might be too acidic for the currants.  They're mostly oak
>leaves.  Should I use then on the currants?  Shredded or aged?
>
>Other than turning the pile, is there anything cheap and easy to do to
>encourage it to decompose?  (Turning is cheap, but not that easy.)  I
>usually leave the lawn clippings on the group - I figure they're good
>for the grass.  Despite being well into suburbia, we have our quota of
>critters so I don't want to leave food lying around.  I'm afraid the
>neighbors would complain if we put urine on the pile.  Does it smell for
>long?  I'm not really worried about weed seeds - nothing there that
>didn't used to be on the lawn - but I'm running out of space to dump
>leaves, and my car is too small to bring them to the dump.  (And I'd be
>happy to have some free compost for my garden.)
>
>Ginda 
>Eastern Mass, zone 6
>lots of small snowstorms this fall


Ginda,

Currants are fairly tolerant of pH, but don't overdo it. I think if the
leaves were composted it would not be too bad. Here, we get a good many
oaks but mostly maple. I try to send the oaks to the blueberry patch. 

I did well with bagged leaves, open the top so they will get well soaked
with snow and rain, by spring they are very decomposed. Punch a couple
holes in the bottom of the bags so they don't fill with water.

We have had some storms and cold weather too, we were predicted to get 2 to
4 inches two days ago and got 5 to 7, I think the excess was "chads" that
blew in from Palm Beach, FL



Northumberland BerryWorks
707 Front Street
Northumberland, PA  17857
Phone:  (570) 473-9910
WWW.currants.com
Ed@currants.com

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