Leaves can be raked into a windrow, and shredded with a mulching lawnmower. The process is pretty messy, but very fast. Shredded leaves will decompose in about one year.

While the optimal Carbon:Nitrogen ratio is 30:1 newly fallen leaves have a C:N ratio of about 40:1, not that far off optimal and explains why leaves piled up and left alone will become leaf mold in a fairly short time. that pile of leaves probably will not get as hot as a well tended compost pile, but the bacteria will be active and digesting them.

Even if you have a small family, don't discount the "greens" that are available all year, like fruit & veggie scraps, tea bags, or coffee grounds. Many coffee shops will be willing to save the coffee grounds for you.

Most Starbucks seem to provide grounds for gardeners, but not around here they don't. But there is a little local place that saves them for me, and I get at least 5 gallons a week there. That's my primary nitrogen source through winter.

Karen

Here is a link that might be useful: Starbucks grounds for your garden

I agree with the other posters. I had a similar weekend with tons of leaves and acorns to round up. The front yard leaves I put in black trash bags, poked holes in them, tied them up and put in the back yard next to my garden. These leaves will decompose quicker than just left to the elements. For the back yard, I built a leaf bin that I can keep adding to as they settle each day. I piled a bunch on the garden. About half the leaves were raked to a 5'x15' ditch/hole by the back fence to fill in and decompose. This is the pile I usually give away in the spring for those people who need browns for their compost.

I have mowed the leaves right into the lawn. They disappear by springtime.

My neighbor tills fall leaves into his soil. He's got a very nice garden.

You might need to cover your pile/windrow with a plastic sheet to keep them from blowing away and drying out. You can use fresh chicken/horse/cow manure to mix with the leaves to compost.

I run leaves through my Mackissic Mighty Mac 12PT10 chipper/shredder and heap them up for the compost bin.

I have a leave shredder and shred mine and my neighbors for use as mulch in my garden. I have been using them for a few years now and really like the shredded leaves as mulch. The leaf shredder works really well if the leaves are dry. If they are wet, either green or wet from water or both - the shredding can be a pain in the butt. I started off using them just in my vegetable garden, but last year I started using them in the flower beds instead of wood chips. Next year I have community garden space too, so I liberated more leaves from my neighbors. I never have enough.

They'll break down without shredding & even without adding nitrogen, but you can always check with local cafes & restaurants & places that have cattle or horses.

Coffee grounds, used teabags, vegetable & fruit scraps, & the old reliable cow & horse poo are all wonderful sources of nitrogen.

Have fun!

I use my trusty leaf blower to shred them! It has the bag attachment and as I suck them up they shred. It's a lifesaver I wouldn't be without! I put the leaves in all my beds too. Wonderful stuff those leaves! (And all my neighbors must be clueless because they all just blow them to the curve lol) What a shame!

Wow! Thanks so much for all the great information and ideas!! There's a chance some sort of small shredder is in the future for me, so maybe I'll be better prepared next time. Thanks again to all.

We have a Toro leaf vac like this, works well.

Karen

Here is a link that might be useful: leaf vac

Thank you for the link Karen. I bookmarked it for when I go over my wish list with DH.

Heap the leaves up into a large pile that's placed in a site that's not visible to your neighbors, then throw a beer party and have everyone urinate on the leaf pile. They will start to decompose in no time.

...Just kidding. I know you wouldn't really do it, but just so you know, I'm not that barbaric, either. As another person said, I mow mine into the lawn. If you run them over enough times, you probably won't even know they were there. The small pieces settle into the grass and disappear by spring.

You were talking about nothing green to add...

Do you drink coffee? If you have left over coffee, you could pour it on the leaves, provided that you could do it in a makeshift bin of some sort, and I'm sure that will help those leaves to break down a lot faster. Just a thought.

"Heap the leaves up into a large pile that's placed in a site that's not visible to your neighbors, then throw a beer party and have everyone urinate on the leaf pile."

OMGosh! Hehehe. I can picture the headlines now. And this used to be such a quiet neighborhood :)

Actually, everyone's suggestions have opened up my mind, and I can't thank y'all enough.

Our mower doesn't have a bagger, but I could figure out some sort of shield for the discharge chute so stuff would go into a windrow instead of all over the place.

I do make a small pot of coffee for my husband and normally pitch the filter and grounds into the garden. It never occurred to me to include the coffee as well. Great idea. I'm thinking of finding some sort of crock to take to work for collecting grounds and coffee there, too.

That made me wonder about the whey that's left over when I make cheese. For every gallon of milk/one pound of cheese, there are 3 to 3 1/2 quarts of whey left. That's far more than I generally use up in a week (for cooking), so it gets pitched.

The cheese making site I use says: "Whey contains lactose, protein, vitamins, and minerals along with traces of fat. Because it digests very rapidly, the amino acids enter the blood stream faster than other protein sources. ... Some people like to soak their grains and beans in whey. Others make it into lemonade by filtering it and adding sweetener. It may also be used as soup stock or to replace liquids in recipes. Acid loving plants such as tomatoes thrive on whey. At the very least, you can compost it."

So, though I haven't a clue about the C:N ratio of whey, I'll hazard a guess that it's lower than that of fall leaves. I'll also hope the trace of fat doesn't foul things up for me :)

Lastly, a colleague loaned me his chipper/shredder to try out. It's been snowing today and supposed to continue through the weekend, but maybe I'll get to try it sometime soon anyway.

Thank you all again for all the help!

A friend shared this:

Here is a link that might be useful: urine bales

This year I am trying something different, at least for me.
I read somewhere that Corn Meal makes a good compost accelerator, so am using that.
Shred the leaves, helps decompose, then sprinkle Corn Meal over the layers, watering it in as you go.
I added a Vent pipe up the middle to provide air infiltration.
Within two days I've got steam coming from the pipe. I will be turning it again in a couple of days, hopefully they will rot down faster than in previous years. Certainly looks hopeful.

Well, this year I took the recommendations I've read here, gathered all my leaves into a rather large pile last weekend and proceeded to feed them into my shredder. Its a '91 Troy-Bilt Super Tomahawk, with a bottom discharge.

I'm very impressed by the fine texture resulting - more impressed by how small the 12' x 12' x 4' pile was reduced - filled up one of my vacant 4' cube bins. I'll incorporate it into a couple of my active compost bins later.

My question to any compost shredders with similar machines:
Have you found a faster method of feeding large quantities of leaves into the hopper? It took me over two hours - feeding the dry leaves in (relatively) small batches, stopping so many times to push the material into the flail drum w/a thick branch.

I have a compost bin provided by the city which is in the north-east corner of my yard and it takes an eternity to produce compost so I shred some of my leaves into the lawn with the lawn mower. Then I dig deep trenches in my vegetable gardens and bury them (some shredded and some whole), wet them well, and by the spring they are decomposed and produce lovely soil for my veggies. I sometimes mix kitchen scraps with them, which I collect in pails just outside my kitchen. Last year I had lots of used coffee gronds from Starbucks and that came in handy for a new bed I was preparing. We have reduced our purchases of yard bags considerably since I read about this in a gardening magazine, and cuts down on the purchase of compost. Nature doing her thing!!

arch, I have a 8 hp WW Grinder, and I have to be a little careful not to overload it, and it does take some time to shred a large amount of leaves. I've found that running some brush---like some delicate spruce or fir boughs through with the leaves keeps it from clogging. I've also found that anytime I've had a helper, they waay over load it and stall it. My last helper reached into a bag of leaves and stuffed some leaves and a sweatshirt into the hopper. I had to take it completely apart to get the sweatshirt out.

Thanks annpat - My chipper/shredder is a WW Grinder 8 hp as well, but has no difficulty at all with shredding or chipping - never stalled, just takes a long time with large piles of leaves due to the hopper's opening limitation. I'll try the branch/twig trick next time and see if that speeds up leaf feeding.

Never shredded a sweatshirt :) but, I did have to shut down the machine during the last use, after hearing a very loud clanking noise - even through my ear protection. The steel battery hold-down bracket must have worked loose and fallen into the adjacent leaf pile and fed into the hopper w/o my knowing. I removed the battery for recharging last time I used it, starts on 1st or 2nd pull anyway, so elec. start is not really needed.

The beast actually chewed the metal into little molten metal bits . . . so hot they ignited the shredded leaves, which I quickly stomped out. I was surprised to find no wear at all on the flail hammers.

Thank you annpat for the link to the urine bales article. I can see I shouldn't have laughed when I first read plant_maniac's idea. I'm sure it wouldn't be tough to talk DH into piddling on the compost heap. I have a concern it might be tough to get him to stop (grin).

Thanks also to beeman for the cornmeal tip and northerner for the trenching in the garden idea. I'm trying a cover crop in the garden this winter, so I hate to disturb that area right now, but I'm inspired to be more organized next year.

We were in Lowe's this afternoon and stopped to look over the chipper/shredder selection. The salesman didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. Maybe it's a good thing that I didn't ask how his Troy-Bilt handles sweatshirts and and battery brackets :)

arch, I LOVE my WW Grinder. It's actually how I found my way here in 1999. I wanted to know how to sharpen the flails and a search got me on the Tool Forum. Mine's pretty old, doesn't have an electric search, and I had two sized hoppers to choose from I bought it, and went with the larger one.

mrs. b, I'm actually holding off on the urine thing, myself because I don't want to find myself going to the bathroom in a bucket for the rest of my life.

LOL annpat. That's just way to close to the truth about me, too.