Chicago area homeowners who have weathered the recent state ban on sending yard waste to landfills will really be put to work in the next several weeks, when trees deposit their autumnal harvest.
And, whether they like it or not, composting is here to stay, at least in those communities that aren`t helping homeowners get rid of their debris, says Jim Schuster, senior horticulture adviser for the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service in Du Page County.
”In Elmhurst and Naperville, the city is picking up and composting debris for the homeowners, so the only ones who are composting are the diehard gardeners,” Schuster says. ”In Lombard, they are not picking up anything, and we`ve had quite a bit of interest there because they know they will have to (pay to) get rid of their own leaves and grass clippings.”
It boils down to economics: It costs Lombard residents $1.50 to buy each paper bag that they fill and put on the curb for a waste hauler to pick up. To show residents they have an alternative, a demonstration compost pile is maintained at City Hall, where volunteers teach the basics. ”I can`t think of a week when we didn`t have five or six people stop by and ask very intelligent questions,” says Gayle Kankovsky, a master gardener-composter with the extension service and a member of the recycling subcommittee for Lombard.
”Now, I grant you, Lombard has 37,000 people, and we`ve barely touched the tip of the iceberg,” Kankovsky says. ”But people who are coming out realize this is the way it will be for the future. Fifty years ago, what did people do with their leaves? It hasn`t been that long that people have expected someone to come and dispose of them.”
Yard control
Though saving money might have been homeowners` biggest incentive for attempting to recycle their leaves, grass clippings and spent flowers, people have also discovered a ”sense of empowerment, that they can control what`s happening in their own back yard,” by making compost piles, said Rob Ringer of Ringer Products, maker of compost bins and supplies.
The Minneapolis-based firm has been making compost products for 30 years. But in the last year, since yard waste laws have been passed in several states, sales of those items have gone up 1,500 percent. Ringer said the company is working with Cook County officials to identify two communities where about 500 of their compost bins will be given to homeowners to ”see how effective this type of recycling program can be.”
Many suburbs, however, have legislated against homeowner composting, says Jim Fizzell, the extension service`s senior adviser for north Cook County, often because they fear it would encourage rodents or cause unpleasant odors. ”I think it`s really narrow-minded, but a lot of communities have done it,” Fizzell says. While some towns outlaw composting entirely, most are crafting their own ordinances with widely varied nuances. Kitchen scraps and pet droppings are the most widely banned substances in the home compost heap. And, there may be a commandment to love thy neighbor, but the state doesn`t allow it in the compost area. Du Page`s Schuster says it is illegal to add debris from a neighbor`s yard to your compost pile.
”The law is there because they don`t want to develop too big a pile in a small area,” he says. ”The nutrients could leach through the soil and contaminate shallow wells. In some unincorporated areas, you will have some wells only 20 to 30 feet deep and the nutrients could be leaching down to the well head. Nitrogen is the biggest problem-nitrite is the toxic form. We don`t want to scare people away from composting (though, because) on a small scale it is not considered dangerous.”
A gaggle of gadgets
For those homeowners who do attempt it, manufacturers have come out with a host of products to make composting easier. Charles Dunn, a garden industry analyst, pronounced that Americans would not be able to generate enough yard waste to fill all the variations on the compost bin shown at the recent National Hardware Show at McCormick Place. Most of the products will hit store shelves next spring.
With or without the help of those gadgets, though, disposing of yard debris isn`t all that difficult, most experts say. Here are some of the tips they offer for coping with fall`s onslaught of leaves:
– Dig leaves directly into the garden; they will break down by next spring, Fizzell says.
– Run a lawn mower over the leaves to shred them. It will not only cut the volume by about 80 percent but it also will help speed their decomposition in a compost heap. Fizzell runs his lawn mower over the leaves on the lawn without picking them up, allowing them to break down over the winter. However, a layer of whole leaves will smother a lawn over the winter.
– Invest in a shredder. ”Grass is really simple (to compost), but leaves are more woody and should be shredded,” Fizzell says. ”People are really going to have to bite the bullet if they haven`t bought a shredder yet. They`re very expensive, a major investment. I suspect several neighbors will go together and put in some money and then store it in someone`s garage.”
– For making compost, use simple bins made of wire, either round or square, says veteran gardener Warren Senneke of Glen Ellyn. He puts various kinds of debris, in layers, in one of his bins and adds a layer of soil for every foot of depth-plus a bit of any fertilizer he has on hand. He then churns the pile to mix the ingredients.
In his second pile, Senneke adds no soil but uses bioactivators, made by Ringer and other companies, to provide the microbial action that breaks down the debris.
Senneke recycles the grass clippings from his two-thirds acre lawn in what he calls an ”eternal” compost pile. He spreads them under a hedge of bridalwreath spirea and adds a small amount of soil every so often. He said he cleaned out the area this spring, and it yielded a large pile of finished compost.
– Let your compost pile breathe, says Steve Jervey, a ”serious”
composter and part-time farmer who volunteers at the Garfield Farm Museum near Geneva. People who seek his wisdom ”don`t know about aeration, that they need a variety of materials, not just grass clippings” to make compost.
– To speed up the breakdown process, manure from farm animals can be added to a compost heap, but it is not necessary to make the pile work, Jervey says. Remember, the more often the pile is turned, the faster the ingredients will break down.
Once this stuff is made, what next? For those who don`t garden, spreading compost under trees and shrubs helps retain moisture and keep weeds down.
For the rest of us, who like our tomatoes red and our petunias hot pink, compost has been called brown gold for its ability to improve soil structure. In most of the Chicago area, it can break down the impermeable clay into workable loam. Nearer the lake, it can add body to sandy soils to allow them to hold water. As any serious composter will tell you, you can never have enough of it.
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More information on composting is available from the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service. There is an office in each county listed in the White Pages under the university.
