Hi Ann, well I don't usually talk about this here on gw, but my toilet is a composting toilet. It's a two-year alternating chamber system. So I'll dump a lot of leaves in the bottom of the chamber that I empty this December (2023), and they'll come out in Dec 2025.

I use sawdust as the cover material in the toilet. In the past I used to crumble the leaves and mix them with sawdust, water the mix, watch it warm up, then use that as cover material. But crumbling the leaves created such incredible dust that it made my respiratory system gacky for days, so I'm inclined to quit doing that this year. I've been getting coffee grounds from several cafes in town and that's amaziing when mixed with the sawdust.

So now I'm thinking about how to make leaf mold in this desiccating climate: I certainly can't keep leaves damp in a mesh ring like you do. The sacks I bring the leaves in are woven plastic, not UV resistant, and after a few months in this bright sun, they start to shred. So I need to figure out something, maybe reuse some old torn UV resistant greenhouse plastic to line something.

My garden is only 2 to 5 years on from absolutely barren desert, so it'll gobble up as much compost as I can make. I'll also use some of the leaves on arrival to mulch several garden beds, but only where I have enough sticks to cover them with a tangle, because otherwise the leaves will just dry up and blow away. The first year or two, I dug leaves in, but that's really hard work and annoying.