Manna from Trees

The weather has been wonderful this week, the tomatoes are still growing and changing to red and the colorful leaves paint the ground and trees with the rays of many colors.

Leaves from the trees, besides adding color to a fall day, are like manna for a gardener. Leaves compost easily over the winter and make for a rich black soil in the spring. Some small cities and towns collect the leaves, compost them and give citizen of the area back some organic soil in the spring.

Some big cities, like Milwaukee, have paid someone to sweep up the leaves and take them out to the country for composting. Then these leaves, composted to rich soil, are sold to companies that make fertilizers and sell it back to us.

Making compost is easy; just pile one layer of nitrogen (coffee grounds, vegetable waste and such) on another layer of carbon (wood chips or leaves). This morning I heard on the radio my old friend, James Godsil, co-founder of Milwaukee Renaissance, where the Diary of the Worm was born. Godsil is now a partner in Sweet Water Organics, urban fish farmers and vegetable growers. He was explaining in simple and clear language how to compost. James was the one who introduced me to Growing Power and power of worms. I, in turn, helped him build his first compost pile. Now he is an ‘urban farmer’.

Each day I go out to the street in front of my house and my neighbors’ to rake the leaves into a wheel barrow and take them to my compost pile or to my worm depository, a mound of compost where worms can winter. No commercial outfit is going to take my manna from the trees and profit from it.

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