Mosquitoes This Year

[scm53]

Originally Posted by usernamenottaken

I noticed they are out already, and ferocious! Our yard is covered in oak trees. After removing 60! bags of leaves ...

WOW! I had succeeded in feeling really sorry for myself at 32 - all lined up last week at the curb like little brown paper soldiers. Sixty is astonishing. You have my sympathies.

[usernamenottaken]

Originally Posted by scm53

WOW! I had succeeded in feeling really sorry for myself at 32 - all lined up last week at the curb like little brown paper soldiers. Sixty is astonishing. You have my sympathies.

Cheaper than a gym membership lol. But now we are having an issue trying to dispose of them. Cedar Park will only take 6 per week. And for special pick up they want $25 for 6 bags and $3 for every bag after that. So about $130 bucks for what we have left on the side of the house. Trying to find a hauling service now, bc that seems expensive to me. But maybe not....

One good thing about NC, you just got them to the curb and a big vacuum truck came and sucked them up for free.

[scm53]

Originally Posted by usernamenottaken

Cheaper than a gym membership lol. But now we are having an issue trying to dispose of them. Cedar Park will only take 6 per week. And for special pick up they want $25 for 6 bags and $3 for every bag after that. So about $130 bucks for what we have left on the side of the house. Trying to find a hauling service now, bc that seems expensive to me. But maybe not....

One good thing about NC, you just got them to the curb and a big vacuum truck came and sucked them up for free.

You have shown me the rare good thing about living in Austin -- unlimited p/u of yard waste. But they have to have something to compost with the sewer sludge to make Dillo Dirt.

We had something similar when we moved in -- they wanted extra bag stickers for the oceans of white packing paper when we moved. We just filled the paper recycling bins around us for weeks at a time. One would think Austin would WANT clean, newsprint free paper. But noooooooo.....

[Austin97]

You should compost all that yard waste.. You would be surprised at home much vegetable waste you throw away too

Get a good tumbling composter and it will pay for itself in a year or two. With a tumbler you will get a fresh batch of compost about every 4 weeks (some say as fast as 2-3 if you get the mix just right).

If you use worms you will get it faster.

A yard of compost from the natural gardener is $53, if you buy it from a garden store it is probably like $1/gallon ($200/yard).

There are 27 cubic feet in a yard.

A 5 cubic ft tumbling composter is available for $100 from amazon. So every 6 batches will make you $53. 12 batches (approx a year) will pay for the composter.

[usernamenottaken]

Originally Posted by Austin97

You should compost all that yard waste.. You would be surprised at home much vegetable waste you throw away too

Get a good tumbling composter and it will pay for itself in a year or two. With a tumbler you will get a fresh batch of compost about every 4 weeks (some say as fast as 2-3 if you get the mix just right).

If you use worms you will get it faster.

A yard of compost from the natural gardener is $53, if you buy it from a garden store it is probably like $1/gallon ($200/yard).

There are 27 cubic feet in a yard.

A 5 cubic ft tumbling composter is available for $100 from amazon. So every 6 batches will make you $53. 12 batches (approx a year) will pay for the composter.

I do have a compost bin, but 60 bags of leaves is a lot of brown. I'd need to add a lot of green to match that. Right? I thought about just making a giant leaf pile in the back corner of the yard, then was concerned about mosquitos and snakes. Having all this shade is nice in the summer, but we pay for it with the leaves I guess...

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Austin97

You should compost all that yard waste.. You would be surprised at home much vegetable waste you throw away too

High tannin leaves, such as the oak leaves that are 95% of my yard waste, don't compost well. That - and as UNNT said - there is simply too much volume in many Austin yards this time of year.

Great idea. Looked into it. Doesn't fit our situation.