As previously noted, we have a huge Moreton Bay Fig in the Back Yard which produces in an average week up to 9 55 Gallon Trash Containers full of what is mostly dry debris. We don’t fill the trash cans to the top because they get too heavy to easily move so they are more like 3/4’s full. Anyway, it is a lot of leaves and figs, etc.
The mulching pattern we have kind of fallen into (not a whole lot of thought went into it…more of practical reality) was to put about half of the debris up in the far back around the fruit trees to save water usage and improve the soil (basically alkaline clay over boulders). And, then the rest we pile up in the seedling area and we add the daily wet garbage from the Kitchen. This effectively adds the green mulch which are missing. The Bugs love this combination and the piles get reduced faster than I would have thought. We used to occasionally water the piles to help the mulching process, but that took more discipline than we had. It was easier to let the bugs do the work. Occasionally, we turn the stacks but far less than we should.
Given the uneven nature of our mulching process and a somewhat hap hazard approach to mulching, we need an easy way to exact the mulch we could use as planting soil. We took an idea from the basic History Channel on Egyptian archeology where the workers were using flexible sifting screens rather than the fixed screen mess box framed ones we often see used in the US. So, giving it a try, we used some old flexible plastic support webbing from the vegetable garden, we threw in a mix bag of mulch and rocked the webbing back and forth so the small pieces fell through and the bigger ones went back to the mulching piles. Seems to work. We do the sifting over an old wheel barrel and then fill the container from it.
A turned over trash can works as a make shift planting bench and we are good to go…..Now we need the energy to keep the pipeline full.
