It's always shocking when neighbors put their leaves out with the trash (Photo 1). Don't they know that they're throwing away perfectly good plant food? If you have a yard, leaves and grass clippings are the two elements you can almost always count on for your compost piles. In addition to fall leaves, I've found several local resources for great compost food.
There's a university nearby that has a central dump for all their landscape debris (Photo 2). I can almost always find an assortment of leaves to choose from there. Finally, there are several locations around Philadelphia where I can pick up woodchips. I always look for chips in the summer cut from end branches . That way I'm getting both the wood and the leaves chipped together (Photo 3). This mixture gives me carbon and nitrogen as well as all the trace minerals the tree has pulled up from the soil and bedrock. Wood ash and coffee grounds complete the plant food recipe.
