If you live here in Northern Thailand, you'll agree with me that the annual slash and burn of agracultural and forest areas is totally out of control during the hot season. So, not only don't I want to add the the problem, but instead of burning garden wastes, I think it's time to learn the put them back in the soil. It I had the extra money, I'd probably go to Pun Pun north of Chiang Mai and learn from experts. But I don't, so as usual, Thai Visa is my friend, well, as long as I can separate the rice from the chafe if ya know what I mean.

I didn't find much on the subject here on this forum. I looked on the Internet to get ideas about composting. I was originally thinking about building a cider block style 3 bin setup against the far wall of the land boarding our home. However, we also have three large cement cylinders, approximately 5 feet in diameter, that were left over from setting up a water holding tank and increasing the height of our well walls. So, not wanting to waste anything, I believe I have my 3 bins already.

In our yard I have a number of trees: mango, tamerine, lumyai, banana, farang, and other trees I don't know the name of. What I have a excess of is: Leaves. Typically my wife would hire someone to rake up the leaves a couple of times of year, which would then be burnt. So I'd like to start composting this stuff instead. We also have garden waste during the rainy season from things we plant, and of course grasses and weeds.

So how do a start? My guess is that I'll need some sort of 'starter'. I know this is commercially available in the West, but not sure about here. Right now I'm starting with leaves, but where do I go from there? I sure that putting leaves in a compost bin and keeping them moist isn't going to do the trick. More to it than that, I'm sure?

I'd appreciate any constructive advise on how to get started from someone who has been down this road before. I firmly believe that organic material from the yard belongs back in the soil, not in the air.

Leaves tend to not compost well unless they are well mixed with other materials. This is because there are not enough different shapes with just leaves and they clog together and the air cannot penetrate the bin.

I don't get so many leaves nowadays as we lost some trees in a storm.

I used to just dig them directly into the soil with some cow manure in a small area and water with diluted EM. I'd just let anything grow that happened to grow and compost that.

Banana leaves and stems, it is normal just to cut them up a bit and leave them around the base of the banana plants. Nature takes them back into the soil.

Usually the only additive required for composting is a little soil as it has the necessary organisms. I like to add some EM. Read the EM thread and you may get some ideas.

As always, it depends... Take for instance the leaves of a tree that have been used in the past for making roofs... you wouldn't expect these to compost very quickly, would you?

I stretched some netting across a corner of the garden two years ago and everything apart from seeding weeds goes in there and some nice compost comes out. Compost needs water, so without watering nothing is going to happen between one rainy season and another.

Compost also needs air, so when it starts to collapse, you need to turn it occasionally. Grass cuttings must be mixed with leaves and other materials.

Just keep it simple and forget stuff about 'starters' and 'building a compost bin'.

There is lots of info available. Here's something I wrote a few years ago, for what it's worth. don

HORT FORUM 2 Composting.doc

ill put a pic of my pile tomorow, we keep pigs, chickens and ducks,

we keep the pigs at first of deep litter, coconut husk and rice hulls first then straw on top of that, they live on that for the first 2 months of there life and i just had straw as needed,

after this we move them clean out this 4x5mtr pen and all the stuff goes into the holding area, its made of corrigated tin, 4 sided and just pilled in, with all the straw ect its does our garden really good, its beautiful stuff after about 4 months, yes a long time to wait but more then worth it, i do throw on the grass cutting and leaves,

to be honest after reading drtreelove, i dont think im watering it enough, ill water more and see what happens with this lot,

If you have coconut palms, remember to turn over the compost every 4-5 weeks.

After I made my first composts, which I didn't turn over too often, we had several young coconut palms starting to die.

My wife said it was because of the composts, which I didn't believe at first, but after some digging in the composts and some searching on the net I found out that she was right.

The Coconut rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros) likes to lay eggs and have its larvae develop in a compost.

When I first startet to turn over my compost, I found lots of larvae. After starting to turn over reguarly I now only find a few each time, and we haven't lost anymore coconut palms.

Slash & burn agriculture is a seasonal problem in many places. We suffer badly every year, here in KL, with haze from land clearing in Borneo and Sumatra.

The promotion of 'slash&char' would be a great solution but broad acceptance of biochar for soil ammedment is still slow to get going.

You could try this yourself on your woody biomass... it will improve your compost in many ways. Check out BackYardBiochar site.

Cheers, Trevor

this is my compost heap in a 4mts square made from corrigated tin