I don't use leaf bags. However, the brown leaf bags would make a good weed blocker or a nice gift to a neighbor as you mentioned or you could even save them for next year if they aren't too beat up. Also, if you have more leaves (or some other compost material) than you will need for a while you could even keep the leaves in the bags until the need for them arises or use them for further leaf collecting ("thieving"), etc. You could also use the bags as a place to store some of your nastier weeds that should not go directly into the compost pile without having died off first. Finally, you could just use them as garbage bags if your town permits.

I have hundreds of bags left over from all the leave raids.
Some are given away to people who save them for me, the rest are shredded in my chipper/shredder.

I just may steal the idea of using the bags as next years weed block, good suggestion. Anyone have any idea or guess how long they will take to break down while lying on top of the beds.

Got a plant to store over winter---these paper bags are the thing to use.

A plant in question.....the geranium...if able to store in a coldcellar or basement area that can give such a plant the desired 40 - 50 F temperture, the paper bag is ideal.

The thing is, you certainly don't want to store plants in a plastic bag....the paper bag, left untied, will gather all the mess from the drying process and be a good place to have the plant wait until its time to renew itself in February/March.

So, such a use then is enough to hang onto such bags.
No use....then offer them to people who do store plants.
Or, use them as they are meant to be used, as garbage bags for garden debris.

Many communities will not pick up if they are not in such bags.

Here is a photo of the bin I made today to store the leaves I have brought here for future composting. To the right of the photo you can see some of the bags. Tomorrow I will fold them up for storage till I need them for weed block.
{{gwi:316074}}
Thanks for your ideas.
Sandy

I use them for when I shred and store next year's leaves, and also for when I go pick up horse manure. I have lots of trees, and no chipper/shredder, so I also use them for small branches and twigs to go out to the curb. I also use them to throw weeds into when I pull weeds. I don't ever put weeds in the compost pile. Don't want to take the chance of helping the little nasties to propagate.

I think the weed barrier idea is a great one! I think I'll borrow that thought!

Deanna

Hello,

I have never seen the paper leaf bags before. I'd use them as a weed barrier myself. I shop at a military commissary where the patrons have a choice between paper and plastic and the paper bags are the nice old fashioned kind, not the ones with the handles. I save them and use them as my weed blocker for around my plants or for small areas. I love paper bags! I personally prefer paper bags or cardboard over newspaper because I don't have to sift through getting out all the commercial papers and plus if the mulch gets too thin in a spot, the paper bags aren't as noticeable as newsprint. That's just me though and my little quirks with asthetics;)

Michelle

For anyone that has livestock or pasture ornaments, I find that the empty brown paper feed sacks work well. The paper looks much like that posted in the picture above however, there are at least two layers (sometimes three) of it in the feed sacks.

Kristi

Maybe you could return the bags to the houses that you got the leaves from. That way next year they can use the bags again and you don't have to "steal" the leaves. You may even wind up with a few new friends.

When I go on leaf runs, I keep about a dozen bags in my van and offer them back to folks out raking. At 40 cents per bag, most people are happy to re-use them. The bags are so sturdy, even after they get wet, they re-gain strength once dried.

I also Freecycle them.

In the last three years I've hauled home hundreds of brown paper yard waste bags filled with compostables from the neighbourhood. At first I set the empty bags aside and tore them up into small (maybe 8" x 8" or less) pieces and added them to the compost bins, in high-carbon layers of browns between high-nitrogen layers of greens. Tearing up the bags wasn't one of my favourite tasks, so they tended to pile up.

A year ago last fall, I'd built up 3-4 feet of lasagna compost layers on one area of my garden. I'd read the FAQ about Interbay Mulch here and was curious to try this method of rapid composting but I didn't have any burlap handy. So, I tried using the paper bags instead of burlap.

In the late fall of '06 I laid one layer of torn-open paper yard waste bags overtop the lasagna layers. I anchored down the bags with small rocks and wood pieces, to keep them from blowing away. The winter snow and rain fell on the covered mound of the lasagna heap, and at times over the winter I looked at it out the window and wondered what was going on beneath.

In the early spring of last year, my curiosity had been growing all winter and I couldn't hold myself back. So, sometime around mid-March I removed the paper cover and checked out the bed.

First surprise: when I peeled back one 3' x 3' chunk of paper, there were 20-30 red garden centipedes clinging to the underside. Now, I live in southern Ontario in Canada, and any healthy well-mulched garden here has a 1-1.5" centipede or two scurrying over the surface in the warm days.

But to see these creatures in such profusion in the middle of March was new to me. And given centipedes are predators, it immediately said to me "the microherd is active here."

Once the paper was removed and I turned my attention to the lasagna heap below, I was again astonished. It looked like and smelled like well-aged compost, the same kind of black crumbled and fragmented materials I'd expect to see in a standard compost bin after a second turning, maybe six months after the start of a compost pile. And a casual dig with a garden trowel confirmed this was the case, right down to the soil level.

I left this lasagna bed open to the air until the end of April and didn't cover it up again. When I raked it out a week or so prior to planting at the start of May, everything in the bed had broken down except for twigs and branches, which I removed.

What was left was 6-8" of fine crumbled black compost. I pocket-planted tomatoes and peppers into it at the start of May and then covered the surface with a about 1/4" of UCG and a healthy sprinkling of alfalfa pellets topped off by a 1/2" layer of fresh wood chips.

The results were astonishing. I've never seen tomatoes or peppers produce so early, so profusely, and so late. They grew so bushy I had to chop them back in late summer -- and the tomato plants at the corners of the sunside ends of the bed grew so heavy with fruit, they pulled over their 4' stakes. Stakes driven 1' into the ground in dense clay.

These are my conclusions, based on this trial:

* The microherd likes damp warm darkness 24/7.

* Paper yard waste bags used as compost & soil covers are permable to rain & snow, and also reduce evaporation to preserve a damp environment underneath their cover. Which is less vulnerable to winter air temperature fluctuations and predation by birds and other surface-dwelling creatures.

* If you want rapid lasagna composting even in cold winter temperatures, put a single layer of these yard waste bags over your lasagna heaps. It will speed up lasagna composting.

All the best,
-Patrick

I have used the empty bags to haul home more stuff until the bags fall apart. Then, I compost them. I also used dozens of them at the bottom of my lasagna beds.

I have returned those used bags to where I picked up leaves only to be met with blank stares about recycling them, most people would rather go buy new bags next fall. One person put them in his shed when given them and then bought new bags the next fall instead of using those old, used bags. Or I have used them for "weed" barriers under the leaves, now shredded, that came in them, or I have shredded and composted them.