On April 21, 2020, I finally moved to the step to put the leaves on the hugel kultur. I figured it would be nice to rake up the live oak leaves in my backyard that had never been raked up before. I got my leaf rake and large shovel and boxes for transport. In the video below, I give you a little look at my backyard and mention how I keep my cats in the yard with bird netting.
It is always a good idea to rake the leaves into a pile. You can try to scoop them up with a shovel, but as I found out, that doesn’t always work too well. It is just better to use the rake to sweep the leaves into the shovel and then lift both tools together to dump the leaves into the box. You will also see that if you have boxes and cats, the curious cat is going to find it irresistible not to jump in. Moedim, Mo for short, was the curious cat of the day. I haven’t been going in the back yard much, so he wondered what his mom was up to.
I forgot about the ants and ended up with a bunch of ants in the boxes with the leaves. So, I left the boxes overnight so they could have a chance to get out. This didn’t always happen, so I would have to take the boxes and process the leaves with the ants still crawling on them. I thought I videoed the process, but it seems I may not have hit the record button. When I raked up the leaves, I got a lot of rocks too. So, I used a large washtub and filled it with water. I dumped leaves and rocks in it and swirled the leaves around so that the rocks would go to the bottom. Then I would scoop them out with my hands into a bucket. The bucket was then dumped on the branches. I also found and sorted out acorns unless they were rotted, and things like screws left over from building the metal building. I am so glad that I did it this way. I sure didn’t want screws and rocks in my hugel kultur.