In this age of recycling, compost is Mother Nature's way of recycling plant material into a substance that is beneficial to our soil. Compost improves soil structure by helping to break up heavy clay soils making them more granular, and increasing the water holding capacity of sandy soils. In addition, composting can, but not always, contain a good range of plant nutrients.

Containers for making compost vary from a simple chicken wire cylinder to a fancy rotating drum. But the simplest of all is a black plastic garbage bag. And the simplest and most abundant material to compost is leaves. You can either rake up the leaves, or collect them in the bagger of a lawn mower. Fill the plastic bag with leaf material, add one shovel full of soil [1] - this supplies the needed microorganisms that ultimately degrade the leaves. A splash of water [2] is needed to moisten the dry leaves and a handful of high nitrogen fertilizer to feed the microorganisms. If you mowed up the leaves, there is no need to add the fertilizer since the accompanying grass clippings will provide sufficient nitrogen. Give the bag a shake and place it in the shade. Then periodically flip the bag over to redistribute the contents and incorporate a bit of air.

This method is a good alternative for those of us unable to turn a standard compost pile regularly, or have limited space in our backyard garden.