Mark's Blog

You should start a compost pile in a corner of your yard. Food scraps and grass clippings will give you great fertilizer in 6-12 months.

The corners of my yard were full a long time ago. The leaves and grass clippings decay, so I use them on the little bit of garden we have. Yet there's more than I can use.

Also, I have wood from trimming trees. Half of one side of the back yard is branches 2-3' deep. Mom was suggesting next time we have a lot of branches to cut that we find someone who can bring in a chipper. Wood makes good ground cover for some parts of the yard.

You must have plenty of compost, too. Seems like with all the rain you get, plants would be growing faster than anywhere else.

I second the wood chip suggestion, keeps the weeds out and leeches nutrients into the soil around plants. We don't have much wood or branches that don't rot, so we just buy bark. But renting a chipper for $100 would've saved me $100 in bark.

Our yard isn't too wild, so not too much green waste. We have slow-growing zyosia grass which I either bag for the compost or let mulch in place. For big things like palm fronds or slow to compost things like weed seeds, I just take them to the green-waste dump. We have two composter bins that run on fruit and vegetable peels, besides the grass.