2.8 HP Electric Chipper/Shredder

Last week of October, 2009

This late in the year plants are drying up and the garden is trying to go to sleep. The greenhouse is still going strong, but the shorter days are telling everything it's time to quit. Once the squash plants and corn stalks are brittle dry, I will compost them. This year I have ordered one of 4seasongreenhouse.com's electric shredder machines. It should be here by the time the plants are ready.

Last year I spent a lot of time and muscle cutting up the long parts of the plants to help them compost faster. Since I am smarter this year than I was last year, I decided to get the shredder to do the shredding of all the big pieces. The smaller the parts that go into the composter, the more quickly they can decompose. You can run your horse pucky and cow pies through the shredder also. It will all mix much better that way. And of course, the endless leaf supply can be shredded.

This electric shredder is quiet to run, so it won't disturb the neighborhood to run it, and there is no gas to buy or fumes to smell. It will be a perfect partner to work along with my Compost Tumbler. I hope it will speed up the composting I do during the winter months.

Debris waiting to be shredded and then composted

While I am waiting for my shredder machine to arrive, I am cleaning out beds and letting the plant debris dry out thoroughly. I even removed the long stringy zuccini plants from the compost tumbler so they would dry out. I will put them through the shredder and return it all to the composTumbler with the other material I have waiting to be shredded.

Well....sorta...

Nov.13th, 2008

I let everything dry out, but then we got 6" of snow and I totally forgot about the drying out process, so now it is all wet again.

But, the chipper/shredder arrived yesterday, only 5 days after I ordered it. So I put it together. You can see how that went in the How To section-look for How to put together the electric chipper/shredder.

The only thing I had that was dry was a bin of leaves, which really don't need to be shredded because they are so thin they break down easily in the compost. I managed to shred up some soft twig and filled the composter with dry leaves, a little rabbit manure and cow pie that was close by, adding a bucket of water and a little bit of wet sand/dirt. I tumbled that around good and now it just has to do it's thing. If I can locate that bag of activator in my garden shed, I will sprinkle some of that into it, as it is pretty cold outside.

Freezing temperatures...

Are definately keeping me from doing anything with my compost tumbler out in the garden. I have been adding kitchen scraps to the Backporch composter tumbler on the back porch. The morning sun hits it full on. Some days it thaws out, but most of the time it is a frozen brick. I put the stuff in the composter anyway, so that when it does thaw, it will be turned a few times. It will all be there waiting for the mid-winter warm up that usually comes along in Feb. If not, well it can just wait til the Spring thaw.

Jan 27,2009 update:

The weather has been roller coaster-ing up and down, but mostly it's been colder than normal. The compost inside the composter doesn't thaw out every day. Turning the composter when the compost is frozen is a hoot. It will start to spin out on you real fast, but nothing inside moves.

Spring will get here...eventually.

I really love my ComposTumbler compost maker. I use it year round to make quick compost out of all my garden materials. It is so satisfying to empty out the finished compost and have to decide what I am going to do with it. Since there is usually a new bed, pot or raised bed to amend, none of it is ever wasted, I never have too much, but sometimes I have too little. This year I made two very narrow, long row beds in an area that wasn't getting any use inside my garden room. That spot is on a slight slope, so I terraced the rows. Now it is easier to navagate the slope, and the rows are narrow enough that I can step over them if I want to. I planted low growing vegetables in them so they don't shade each other as they run N-S.

My soil is nearly pure sand, very high in minerals, but absolutely no water holding power. It's great for growing onions and carrots, but it does need compost added to it to help feed the roots and hold some moisture near them. I put one wheelbarrow load of compost into both of these new beds, which are about 12" wide by 20' long. They need more. Behind the onions you can see another board under the legs of the rabbit hutches. I catch the rabbit pellets and compost them to add to the beds also. It is a good source of manure to have handy for adding to the composter in order to create the balance of 'green' material to 'brown' material. Fresh manure is a 'green' material to use if you have no fresh grass clippings or prunings to put into the mix. Since I compost year round, the fresh grass is not always there for me, so we use manure. If I run short, I also have a pile of cow pies to use.

This picture shows a late planting of sweet peas after most of the beets are gone, and it looks pretty dry and in need of more compost sprinkled over the top, which was done, by the way.

My ComposTumbler is like a good soldier, always standing at the ready. It is the destination point for garden debris, sits near the water hose, and in the sun. The little shed outside the garden protects it from most of the harsh north winds. I just planted some trees on the northeast side of the garden border for more winter protection eventually. Even most winter days get sun and warm up the composter.

For me, composting is part of the gardening cycle.

What is a Worm Factory anyway?

Why compost with worms?

What kind of worms are used in worm composters?

Step by step worm bedding.

Getting Started

What is a Worm Factory anyway? It sounds like a place to make worms out of parts.

The Worm Factory is a composter that is designed to meet the needs of worms to enable them to convert waste material into worm castings in a way that is simple and easy to harvest the worm castings. The Worm Factory is made up of recycled plastic trays that are interchangable. The moving around of the trays greatly speeds up the process of being able to harvest the worm castings and enable the worms to move on to another tray to begin to convert the fresh contents in it into more castings. The castings are called worm castings, or vermicompost. The process of keeping a worm factory working and making worm castings is called vermiculture.

Terracota Three Tray Worm Composter

There are different ways to keep worms, but after experiencing most of them, I find The Worm Factory, pictured here and sold at ComposterHQ.com is, by far, the easiest (translate that 'smartest') way to harvest vermicompost. It is ten times more efficient and easier to get castings from that do not have a bunch of worms in it. You don't want to 'harvest' worms with the castings because you want them to stay behind and keep on working for you, making more castings.

Removing worms from the castings in other types of worm beds is very time consuming. In The Worm Factory, the worms automatically move from one tray to another as soon as they finish eating everything, leaving behind a tray of worm castings. You then simply remove that tray and empty the contents into a container, refill it with fresh worm bedding and place it on top of the other working trays.

If you see a few worms left in the bottom tray, all you have to do is place it on the upper tray, leave the lid off and stir it a few times a day. The worms will migrate downward into the tray below, as they do not appreciate light and move away from it. When you stir it and see no more worms, it's ready to be removed from the tray and used.

What kind of worms are used in worm composters?

Different worm species have different behavioral patterns. There are worms that live six feet underground, and worms that live in the ocean. The best worm to use in a worm composter is the red wriggler, or Eisenia fetida. Using worms that are going to be happy where you want to put them just makes good sense. The behavior of red wrigglers is perfect for the job we want them to do. They are very ferocious feeders, they reproduce quickly, and they move readily between the upper and lower layers, staying mostly at a certain level below the surface. Most of us have turned over a log or board and found worms on the surface. Once we move the board, the worms go underground because they do not like light. We are utilizing the natural behavior patterns of the red wriggler to our advantage in the worm factory bins. This is less stressful on the worms and makes it super easy to harvest the finished vermicompost.

The Red Wriggler

Red wriggler worms are not best suited for in-ground gardens because they are very aggressive and may attack and consume regular earth worms and night crawlers. Keep them separated. If you are getting an overabundance of red wrigglers in your worm factory, move some of them into another worm factory, give some away to new owners of worm factories, sell them to fishermen as bait.

Where do I get red wrigglers (Eisenia fetida)?

>When you purchase your worms, make sure you are getting the right kind of red worm, as the different species are difficult to tell apart. They are sometimes available at bait shops, or you can find them on the web. Try to buy them locally, as they won't be as stressed by a long shipping trip. You can start with just 1/2 pound of worms, about 500, as they will multiply. You can go to FindWorms.com on the web to find the closest dealers. You may want to look around to compare prices, shipping fees and guarantees.

Step by Step Worm Bedding

Your Worm Factory arrives with a brick of coir and bag of shredded paper to make the worm bedding with. Once that is put into the worm factory, you should begin to think about gathering the materials needed for future bedding, which will come in as little as one month, depending on how many worms are in your factory. Paper is easy to come by. Any paper you use should be shredded first. Substitutes can be made for the paper and coir, but the end results will look different and not be as easy to harvest. Therefore, I recommend you shred scrap paper without the plastic windows in envelopes, but glue is fine, and that you purchase a case of coir to mix with the paper to get the right texture and ventilation the worms like.

I mixed my first batch in the dining room, but it is a little messy and works better as an outdoor activity. You will need a bucket of water to soak the coir. It really soaks it up, so put a lot of water in a bucket and let the coir soak it up, it may take up to 30 minutes.	Recycled paper

If you check the brick after 10-20 minutes, and it has absorbed all or most of the water, add some more to the bucket. Any excess water will be absorbed by the paper when you add it.	This is what the damp coir and paper look like mixed together.

Any clumps of coir that are present should be broken apart so none of it stays dry and it makes a nice 'fluffy' bedding. Now you are ready to add the shredded paper that has been accumulating all over the house. You will have to put your hands or a stick into the bucket to really mix it up well. The paper has a tendency to stick together, so mixing with the hands makes it easier to seperate clumps of paper and get a feel for how wet everything it. You can let it soak for a while and in the meantime, you can empty any finished trays the worms have completely processed. Start with the bottom tray. If worms are still present, place it on the top, leave the lid off and stir it with a stick gently and let it set for a while (about 30 minutes). This will give the worms time to move away from the light and into the lower bin. It won't hurt the new bedding to soak for awhile, so let the worms take their time to do what they do naturally.

We're sorry, In 4. above it mentions page 11, that information is provided here:

Why do you want to feed worms if they eat their bedding?

If your vermicomposter is the only composter you have, you can use it to recycle your kitchen waste and feed the worms at the same time. If you have other composters, your kitchen waste can be recycled in them. You may find that feeding your vermicompost worms food scraps to be an interesting experience. You can learn a lot about vermiculture when you add blended food scraps to the trays.

The first thing to do is seperate out the things worms will not eat. It's pretty much the same as for other composters, worms are vegetarians so you don't want to feed them cheese, meat, dairy, or fats of any kind. You can give those treats to the dogs, cats, chickens or pigs at your place. If you have scraps from preparing salad or vegetables from dinner, put them into a blender with enough water to get it moving, and blend til smooth and add about 1/4 cup of it to one of the trays, under the newspaper covering.

Some of the things that are excellent for worm food: Tea leaves and thier bags, coffee grounds, lettuces, all veggies, they'll eat any kind if it's ground up finely. The secret to feeding worms is to make the particles small enough that they can get it into their very tiny mouths. You can even grind up egg shells for them, just make sure they are very fine.

You can put coffee grounds directly into the feeder trays along with the filters. It will take them longer to eat the filter, but they will.

TIP: If you place about 1/4 cup of blended veggies in one corner of a tray under the paper, you can go back in a day or two and check to see if the worms are eating it. If they are ignoring it, they probably have plenty of other things to keep them busy eating. If they are diving over each other to get to it, they are probably on the verge of starving to death. If you see this behavior, you need to redo all the trays with fresh bedding for them to eat. If you have fresh bedding in the trays and still see this behavior, it may indicate the need to thin your worm colony, reducing the amount of worms in your vermicomposter. This is a nice problem to have. You can purchase another vermicomposter and have twice as much vermicompost to use, you can sell some of the worms to fishermen, or give them to someone who is just starting a worm factory.

TIP: If you live in the colder zones, putting your worms in the ground outdoors will kill them. Red wrigglers remain in the upper layers of the earth where frost can reach them. Also, they are not compatible with regular earthworms. They are more aggressive eaters and may attack other species. If you have a heated greenhouse, you can put them in there. In fact, a heated greenhouse is the perfect place for your vermicomposter during the cold months. It will be too hot for the worms in the summer, though.

Read our article on the benefits of worm composting

Because vermicompost is what will save the earth from the damage mankind has done to it. This may sound like an overly broad-sweeping statement, but if you examine the subject thoroughly, you will see why. The soil in which we grow our food and other plants affects the quality of those plants. The micro-organisms (all those tiny creatures you cannot see without a microscope) and larger living creatures that reside in the soil all impact their environment. They feed on each other as well as other things present in the soil and leave behind castings that are chemically broken down.

The roots of growing plants search for and suck up these chemical compounds with the aid of water present. The water is like the straw humans use to get food inside. The chemicals are the vitamins inside the liquid. Both moisture and the chemicals need to be present to enable the plant to survive. The type of compounds your plant is able to suck up and feed on is determined by what is present in the soil. If we want healthy and vigorous plants we must feed them the best food. And that is vermicompost.

What is the difference between vermicompost and compost from a composter?

Composters convert leaves, grass, kitchen waste and other organic natural materials into a nutrient-rich, loamy soil amendment that will feed your plants and change the texture of the soil so it will hold enough water and allow excess water to perculate out. The nutrients that are in compost may or may not be immediately available to the plant roots. It takes further breaking down of the material to make them available.

That is where the micro-organisms and worms come into the picture. They eat the compost and convert it to vermicompost, which is then available for the plant roots to use. Vermicompost is the final phase of the composting process. When we make vermicompost, we are creating a product that is going to feed the plants instantly; boosting their growing ability, health and production quicker. Plants respond quickly to the availablity of nutrients on the chemical compound level and it shows up in their growth and color.

Why Compost with Worms?

A composting worm bin system is an incredibly efficient and effective way to quickly convert your kitchen waste, cardboard, newspaper, junk mail, dried leaves and most other organic materials into the most nutrient rich compost for your plants, planters, flower beds and garden.

In nature, once-living material is slowly broken down into the nutrients that plants use. It is an ongoing process in nature's food chain. You will see it happening if you leave the grass clippings on your lawn; they dry up and then sink down between the blades of the uncut grass. This is now called thatch. If you leave the thatch alone, the layer that is on the bottom, touching the soil will begin to compost, the micro-organisms in the soil will begin to work on it, eating it and converting it.

Those micro-organisms and larger creatures like worms, will only be able to work on the portion of that they can reach, which is why the bottom layer is what is composted first. As that layer is slowly process, the upper layers sink lower into contact with the soil and provide food for those micro-organisms, worms, etc. This entire process can take up to two years to complete. If you continue to cut the lawn and leave more clippings on it, the process will never be entirely finished, as it has new fresh material to work on.

We greatly speed up this natural process when we use a worm compost bin system to recycle the natural materials. We gather the material up, and place it where the worms can get to it much quicker and with many worms present, they go to work on it and quickly convert it in as little as one month, as compared to 2 years or more.

In full operation, a worm composter, which is called a vermicomposter, can house 10,000 to 12,000 worms. That is a lot of eating power. They can process up to 5 pounds of material every week. That would probably be all the junk mail and kitchen waste a household creates each week.

If every household in America maintained a vermicomposter just for junk mail, newspapers and kitchen waste, the impact on our waste disposal systems (dumps) would be phenomenal in scope. For decades, the way mankind exists on earth (on average), has moved so far away from allowing nature to take it's natural course of recycling and replenishing the soil, we now have to make an effort to assist Mother Nature to bring back the balance needed to sustain her and us.

We also desire to live in areas that in the natural state do not provide for good gardening, like the desert states. Since people like to eat and garden, no matter where they live, we help nature along by providing the best materials needed to make it happen. Composting with worms is the most effective way to do that.

What kind of worms are used in worm composters?

Different worm species have different behavioral patterns. There are worms that live six feet underground, and worms that live in the ocean. The best worm to use in a worm composter is the red wriggler, or Eisenia fetida. Using worms that are going to be happy where you want to put them just makes good sense. The behavior of red wrigglers is perfect for the job we want them to do. They are very ferocious feeders, they reproduce quickly, and they move readily between the upper and lower layers, staying mostly at a certain level below the surface. Most of us have turned over a log or board and found worms on the surface. Once we move the board, the worms go underground because they do not like light. We are utilizing the natural behavior patterns of the red wriggler to our advantage in the worm factory bins. This is less stressful on the worms and makes it super easy to harvest the finished vermicompost.

The Red Wriggler

Red wriggler worms are not best suited for in-ground gardens because they are very aggressive and may attack and consume regular earth worms and night crawlers. Keep them separated. If you are getting an overabundance of red wrigglers in your worm factory, move some of them into another worm factory, give some away to new owners of worm factories, sell them to fishermen as bait.

Where do I get red wrigglers (Eisenia fetida)?

>When you purchase your worms, make sure you are getting the right kind of red worm, as the different species are difficult to tell apart. They are sometimes available at bait shops, or you can find them on the web. Try to buy them locally, as they won't be as stressed by a long shipping trip. You can start with just 1/2 pound of worms, about 500, as they will multiply. You can go to FindWorms.com on the web to find the closest dealers. You may want to look around to compare prices, shipping fees and guarantees.

Read our article on how to use a worm composter

It is really hard to know just how much of the finished compost you will be able to make or how much you will want to use. Your ability to make compost is based on a variety of factors. How much lawn do you have? How often do you mow it? Do you use a grass catcher on your mower, or do you rake it? Do you have a lot of trees in your yard? How about shrubs and flower beds? They shed leaves too. And there are trimmings from the flowers, bushes and trees as well as deadheading scraps, plus garden scraps. How large is your garden? The larger your yard and garden or extensive your beds are, the more composting material you will have, as well as needing more compost for them.

Now, how do you convert all this data into, "What size of a compost maker will handle it all and make as much as I need"?

You will not be composting a whole years worth of organic materials all at the same time. During the spring months you will probably have some springtime cleanup from raking out beds and trimming shrubs that need spring trimming. Do you have hedges that need some shaping up after the winter snows? Are you planning to scrape up lawn for new beds this spring? The sod can be composted. All this material will be turned into compost probably before you start cutting the lawn, which will then become an ongoing chore throughout the summer months. The more lawn you have, the more clippings you have. This will keep your compost maker pretty busy during the summer. What are you going to do with all the compost you have made so far? I am always surprized at how quickly my compost gets used, and you can never have 'too much'.

Tumbleweed Compost Tumbler

• It can be spread 1-2" thick in pots, beds and garden, even the lawn. It gives everything a mid-season boost to keep on going strong. Container plants have a finite amount of nutrients to draw from, so giving them a a new layer of compost will make more nutrients available to them. Every time you water, the goodness is leached down to the root system.
• Summertime compost is excellent to use as a repotting mixture. You can add as much as you want without worrying about burning roots.
• It can be used to start a late summer/fall garden to boost the soil for the late crops to flourish.
• If you have houseplants that need to be moved up a pot size, use compost in the soil mix.

You can see the uses for compost can be nearly endless. You usually can keep a composter busy all summer and well past fall with all the leaves that need to be recycled into "black gold". You will find making compost out of something you used to send to the curb in a black bag is a very satisfying feeling.

Generally speaking, once you get into the pattern of composting, you will find you have or want more materials than you first anticipated, and you will find new uses for the finished compost. That seems to translate into, "Get the biggest compost maker you can physically handle, because this idea is going to grow along with your garden".

One last consideration in choosing which compost maker to purchase is the price. I make this the last consideration, because size will influence the price to a degree. The best deals are not always the cheapest. The amount you pay for your compost maker will be reflected in the materials, ease of use, and features. If you know how you are going to use your finished compost, you are half way there.

Every year, the seaons bring growth & decay, again and again. Eventually it breaks down enough to become available to the new plants that are sprouting. Now that you have a yard full of dust, you want to change it into something green. It just makes sense to put back what was removed so the plant will have something to feed on. This demonstrates what a person is attempting to do when they make compost to use in their yard, pots, garden and flower beds. The plants know what they need to grow, and if it is not there you cannot expect the plants to be happy.

A healthy vegetable plant will produce lots of tasty fruit to eat. A healthy flower plant will produce big, beautiful flowers. Healthy plants resist disease and infestation better than unhealthy plants. Compost also amends (or improves) the texture of the soil, adding 'tilth', which is just the right amount of water-holding ability and perking ability. If your soil will not 'hold' water, like sand, the water will flow right through it very quickly, making it available for the plant only during the short time it is there. Water is necessary for the roots to be able to move the chemicals from the soil up to the plants. Without a consistent supply of moisture, they cannot feed, and therefore they won't grow and produce the way we want them to.

One the other hand, if you have a thick, hard, clay like soil that does not allow the water to penetrate the surface or drain through it, the plants will drown from lack of oxygen at the root level. The roots need a proper balance of moisture and air to be grow. They are very much like humans in this respect, they need some of each, and not too much of either, thankyou. They say "Man does not live off bread alone" (he needs a glass of wine, too).

Making compost also helps Mother Earth renew itself more quickly. If we take the materials that would ordinarily be sent to the landfill and turn it into something beautiful and useful, we are contributing to the end good instead of the end problem. Every city has an overburdened landfill site. Landfills don't decompose materials, they bury them alive. They have found that newspaper is still readable after 20 years buried in a landfill. If you multiply that newspaper by all the papers read by all the people every day, think about how big the landfill is getting! Studies have shown that the biggest impact on recycling is made on the home level.

If you want healthy plants, a healthy earth, and a healthy sense of having done the right thing, then you do want to make compost.

1. Organic (natural) materials, like newspaper, leaves, grass, fruit and vegetable scraps...
2. Soil, which contains the tiny creatures we call micro-organisms that actually do the work.
3. Water
4. Air

If you have a pile of leaves or a bag of grass clippings, you have the makings for a compost pile. The air, water, and soil are everywhere. All you have to do is gather up the organic matter and mix it with the other ingredients. There are various ways you can do this process, some take longer than others to finish. I have composted in all the ways known to man and can tell you from that experience, that you will get the quickest and most complete batch of compost by using a compost tumbler or similar compost maker.

The Compost Tumbler 9.5

The tumblers allow you to easily control the ingredients in the perfect porportions to allow the process to work in as little as 2 weeks. If you want your compost, and you want it now, a tumbler is the only way to get it. Conventional piles will take years to finish composting, bins still take months and lots of back breaking mixing to finish, as well as being exposed to varmints. If you have a huge amount of leaves (consider yourself lucky), you can stock pile them until you need them. They may begin to break down before you put them into your tumbler, but that's ok. You can keep them in anything to keep them from blowing away.

If you have a compost tumbler, you simply fill it 2/3 full with leaves or other brown material like pieces of plants, grass clippings that are dry, add something green (like fresh green grass clippings, plants that you have pulled up, kitchen scraps, etc.). The brown material can be shredded newspaper or other paper, branches and prunings. The woody material should be shredded up first so it will break down quickly. The smaller you make the particles that go into your composter, the quicker it can be eaten by the tiny creatures and turned into humus. You can run your lawn mower over some leaves, use the catcher, and then dump it into the composter. A shredder machine is nice to have for the woody materials, but if you don't have one, just set the tree trimmings and the like aside for now, and use the more breakable materials.

First Week Compost

There are a few theories about how much brown material to green material to put into your composter. I have read it should be a 30:1 ratio, brown to green; some say it should be 50/50. If you know why you are putting the different things into your composter, you will be better able to judge for yourself what goes in and how much. The goal is to convert all those leaves and other materials into "black gold" (fertilizer) quickly.

Some of your material is dry or processed, like leaves and newspapers. This should make up the bulk of the ingredients. You also need to add something that is green, because fresh green material starts to break down quickly and will help to activate the decomposition quickly. As soon as you cut it, grass starts to convert its chemistry to Carbon Dioxide, and this process creates heat. When the micro-organisms in the soil get warmed up, they start munching away on the brown material, trying hard to eat themselves out of house and home. They will be multiplying at the same time, and so the process begins to speed up as the days go by, and they will generate some heat themselves, and now you have what is called a "hot" compost. You can feel the heat from the outside of the tumbler when they are active.

Compost in Progress

You will need to add some moisture in the beginning, and check it once in a while to see if it needs more moisture. You do not want to keep it too wet. The most important part of speedy decomposition, I believe, is adding air to the pile on a regular basis. You turn your pile by tumbling your compost maker, which infuses air all over the pile. If you were just using an old fashioned pile or bin, you would have to shovel it all over to get the air inside and the outer materials nearer to the center where they can break down more easily. Most gardeners and composters are not inclined to do all that shoveling every day. With a compost tumbler, it's so easy to do it by turning the tumbler or the handle. You can then open it up and look inside to check on progress and moisture levels.

During the decomposition process, the compost will change in looks and smell. At first you will smell grass clippings as they give off their carbon dioxide. Then you will start to smell the different levels of decaying from the different materials, and all of it will become darker and reduce in volume. It is actually much easier to monitor compost in a tumbler than in a bin.

We view compost as something we make, but Mother Nature has been making it since creation. It stems from the natural revolving of the seasons. In the winter the ground is absorbing moisture from the rain and snow that falls. In the spring when the sun warms things up seeds sprout, and they grow all summer until the autumn, when the plant wants to sleep or die and regenerate itself.

The process of regenerating shows up most readily in the making of seeds and the drying up of the green plant. In the autumn when leaves fall we see this process most vividly. If we let the leaves lie on the ground when they fall, the winter rains and snow will begin to break them down, causing them to rot. The soil under the leaves contains micro-organisms (tiny creatures) that also eat the leaves and help to break them down to the elements they are made up.

It is like taking apart the castle you built with tinker toys as a child. In order to put them away to use again later, you must first break the castle down into the individual elements to store them and have them ready for the next time you want to build something with them. This is what nature is doing with the leaves and all the other plant matter that first turns brown, dries up and crumbles easily, then the dirt and the moisture work on them to break them down further, leaving behind what we call humus, or decayed organic matter. The decayed matter is now at a stage where the elements are available for plant roots to absorb them and use to grow big and strong and put out fruit or flowers for us to enjoy.

Compost in progress