CLARKS SUMMIT, Pa. — Landscapers with the Atlas Group are working to get all of their properties tidied up and making sure everything is in its place before the winter months.
After the rainy and windy weekend, that means focusing on leaf clean-up this week. Workers with the landscaping company based out of Olyphant are cleaning up the beds at this commercial property in Clarks Summit, gathering all the leaves and grinding them up to take them back to their yard to harvest and compost.
"So it's a great time of year now to harvest all of those leaves, the plant material, the grass clippings. And pretty much what we can do with that is create our compost piles for next year," said Andrew Kaminski, COO of the Atlas Group.
Landscapers say you can use your pile of leaves as a mulching mat which will prevent weeds, or you can grind them up and mix them with grass clipping and twigs to create compost which will eventually become a fertilizer - a great way to add nutrients to your garden or landscape bed using materials you would otherwise just throw away.
"The nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium create a big bundle of energy for these plants to take and grab once we're out of the winter months," Kaminski said.
Kaminski says to start building your leaf compost pile now. It will start to generate heat and break down the nutrients needed for your plants and vegetables to thrive.
"Let that build some steam and start to break down the process. Then probably every month, you can go through and flip it over. Just creating and starting a pile now so we can let that do its composition breakdown," said Kaminski.
It is a relatively easy process, but it does require patience to compost your leaves, and turning over your piles more frequently can speed up the process.
"Keep working that pile because it does take some time to really establish into compost, so having two separate piles and making sure, just like Christmas tree farms, they're already planting for ten years from now. Just create a pile off to the side and keep making sure to have piles ready for the future so you can use it as compost for your plants," Kaminski explained.
And before you know it, you're ready to tend to your garden again this spring.