Yes, windblown or culled fruit from trees such as apple, peach, apricot, pear, cherry, and plum is considered acceptable leaf and yard waste. Halloween pumpkins can also be taken to the yard waste sites.
No, this is not true. Heat created by microorganisms during composting kills weed seeds and disease-causing organisms.
Temperatures of compost piles routinely reach 65°C (149°F) for consecutive days; high enough to kill weed seeds. To test this, a study was done in which cookie sheets filled with compost were placed in an office window and watered to see if anything would germinate. Nothing ever did.
Compost is a great growing medium. If any weed seeds are blown onto your garden after you have added the compost, weeds are certainly bound to germinate. By their design, weed seeds flourish in disturbed soil, especially ones with nutrient rich compost added to it.
You can bring smaller containers (garbage cans or Rubbermaid bins) and fill them yourselves with compost. Each container filled with compost costs $5.00.
A loaded tractor bucket (approximately 500 kg) is $25.00.
Received yard waste is fed into a large grinder which chips the material into finer and smaller pieces.
The ground-up yard waste is then placed into large rows where natural bacteria start the breakdown process. Rows are turned by a mechanical turner (like a massive rototiller) about once a week to ensure uniform breakdown of materials and to provide oxygen to the bacteria in the windrow.
During turning, treated wastewater effluent may be added to the compost rows if they seem too dry. This process continues for 3 to 12 months (depending on row composition and time of year) while the yard waste breaks down. Once the yard waste is deemed to have broken down enough, the material is placed through a large screener which removes larger debris and any plastics that may have been missed at the yard waste receiving end. Screened material is then ready for sale to the general public.
On average it takes about 8 months for yard waste to become compost.
Cinnamon Ridge compost is made from 100% yard waste dropped off by residents at one of our three yard waste sites.