It’s that time of year. Leaves are in plentiful supply and for those in the know, they are a valuable resource. The last two autumns around this time I have been scooping up sackloads of leaves in my local park.
Stored in those bin liners in an out of the way place, occasionally wetted down, they have been slowly decomposing into a useful product – leaf mould. Depending on the type and size of leaf, this process can take up to three years, so some patience is required. I recently ran out of patience and decided to make use of the batch I stashed two years ago. I assumed that the necessary magic would have happened. It was certainly much closer to the desired end product than it was one year ago.
In the one year old batch there were still many large pieces of leaves and plenty of leaf stems in evidence.
In the two year old batch there are fewer large pieces and much more of the crumbly small fragments that I’m looking for.
Clearly, though, it is not fully decomposed. Rather than put them back for another year, I decided to put it through a garden sieve. I let each bag dry out for a day or two to make this a bit easier. The sieved material is extremely fine and soft to the touch.
The larger pieces, sticks etc that didn’t make it through the sieving process are still useful. Some potential uses for this partially decomposed leaf matter are:
- soil conditioner
- as part of compost mix for woodland plants and ferns
- mulch to protect delicate plants over the winter
I have previously used a bag of partly rotted leaf matter as an element of the compost mix for my fern planter living wall thingy. The ferns seem happy enough. More recently I have used a couple of bucket loads as a duvet for overwintering dahlias.
I have quite a bit of the finished product, I have more or less filled an old compost bag. I think I will mostly use it for seed sowing in the new year. As it is light, fluffy and inert it makes a perfect sowing medium, the new roots can easily spread through it. If I have any left over I will use as an ingredient in potting mix when it is time to move seedlings on.
Back to this year’s batch. My easily available trees are mostly big leaved trees like sycamore, and it seems those leaves really need three years to fully break down. In an attempt to speed up this process, this year I have borrowed my neighbour’s petrol mower, using it to chop up the newly collected leaves into smaller pieces.
It has worked a treat. A dozen bags of leaves have been reduced down to four, so not only will it rot down quicker, I will be using less space. Or maybe it means I should be collecting another couple of dozen bags of leaves!
I’ll be back soon with more garden gubbins.
Have you tried any method to make it more quicker ? I made good quality leaf mold within just a year by shredding the leaves using a lawn mower before piling them and after 1 month I added some urea to supply more nitrogen to the pile. I never waited for 2 years.
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I have now. Used a lawnmower to shred the leaves this year, should make it faster.
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Everyone else seems to put more thought into this. I just took the crud from under the piles of valley oak leaves. I know that there were times when it was not adequately composted, but it always seemed to work. In our region, the really good leaves are not so abundant. Because this is a chaparral climate, many of the oaks have a thick waxy cuticle that preserves them. Coast live oak and canyon live oak leaves take a long time to decay. Redwood is too toxic to bother with right away (although I used it too sometimes). Many of the trees in the landscape are worthless for good leaves. Palms and dracaenas decay into a fibrous thicket. Southern magnolia leaves are like really big coast live oak leaves. We do not get much maple or cottonwood.
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We have tons of leaves here that that up to 8 weeks to totally rake up. I have found the easiest way to handle this many leaves is to run the lawn mower over them to mulch them up. Then I run the lawn mower over them again with the bag on it to suck them up. I have made a large bin in the far back of my yard where I dump them all and in a year’s time I have beautiful fine leaf mold, and lots of it. I heard Monty Don say he treats his leaves like another crop to be harvested, and ever since he said that, I do the same. It makes an overwhelming job much more tolerable knowing I am giving back to the ground what nature has provided.
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Wow! That’s a lot of leaves. Sounds like you have it down to a tee.
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If leaves are so resistant to breakdown it is presumably because they contain little of use to soil organisms. I have in the past used leaf mould in lieu of peat for growing alpines and I guess its value was almost entirely for its physical properties. Which begs the question of how do finely shredded but uncomposted leaves compare with 2 or 3 year old leaf mould., as a compost ingredient or as a mulch/soil improver. The problem with shredding it is that there always seem to be stones in it; really not good for shredder blades.
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In short, dunno!
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I’ve collected leaves from streets all around. I’m just making an open pile and stuffing into compost bins as space becomes available. Is there any chance they could upset the bins and congeal into a wet slab?
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In your regular compost bin? No, not if you mix them up with the other stuff, aerate/turn the heap periodically.
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Thanks. I’ll do that. I don’t usually turn it at all, just let it rot down but I think with so any wet leaves I’ll give it a good shake up.
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I’ve never understood why it take a couple of years to rot down in bags – but if you don’t rake or sweep them from your garden paths, they start decomposing almost immediately 🙂
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Ha good question!
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Nice, such an underused resource. Why don’t they sell it?
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Takes too long would be my guess. Compost can be churned out in industrial quantities quite fast.
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