This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
How to make leafmould
in Talkback
Monty Don showed us a handful of crumbly leafmould last week which he said was from last year's leaves. My last year's leaves are pretty much as they were when I put them in chickenwire bays. I watered them when I first put them in but left it to the elements thereafter; they are not covered. I have just transferred the contents of one to the other to make room for this year's and hoped that there would be some usablel leafmould at the bottom but all I found was compacted wet leaves. Those at the top were quite dry. What should I be doing that I'm not?
0
Posts
It can take a long time but you can speed it up a bit by putting them in black bin liners, watering and poking a few holes. Some types of leaves do take longer to rot down (2 years or more) than others - what type of trees do you have?
Some info. here:
http://www.the-compost-gardener.com/composting-leaves.html
I find it better to bag them personally, wire bins do take longer to rot down in my experience.
I use builders bags. Its mainly oak leaves. I turn one into the other at the end of year one. It still takes at least two years to rot well to crumbly leafmould.
I think the black bags are quicker. I had mesh bins in a previous garden and, as the trees got bigger and the quantity of leaves greater, I had to use bags. The bags were more or less rotted within a year, while the bins weren't. Mainly sycamore and lime trees in that garden.
Keeping them damp helps the process, and if you can shred them, it makes the process quicker too.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I have a chicken wire bin and fork over my leaves about twice a year, takes mine a year to turn to usable leaf mould. I find the top layer is generally un-changed and a little dry but beneath that tends to be good leaf mould.
Going over with a lawnmower certainly does help but I've only done that once and found it too much effort so now I just wait and see what happens.
My votes with black bags or recycle bins. I used recylce bins for last yrs leaf mulch and gave the contents a good stir every couple of months, it was ready to use approx 12 months later. Three boxes reduced to one.
This yr I made a heap on the allotment and they were slow to rot down so I've started adding them to the main compost as a 'brown'.
Leaf mould is one of life's wonders for me, it can take up to 2yrs to rot down in bags or a heap yet is gone before the first snow if left under tree's!