Kitchen Garden Forum

This year I have built myself a leaf cage from metal rods and wire netting because I really want to make some good leafmould, having made some half-hearted attempts in recent years. There is no shortage of trees around here, but are there any particularl leaves I should avoid or should include?

And how long, roughly, does it take for the leaves to break down properly? The 'cage' is under a tree and probably won't get very wet from rain, so should I water it occasionally/

Dear Monika, theres no doubt that Oak and Beech leaves make the finest leafmould.
But i always use a mixture of all leaves, if you can gather them when damp all the better, but if not it pays to wet them as you add them to the heap. Another thing that i have found helps enormously is treading them down as you add the layers. This seems to help with the speed of the leaves decomposing.

A full year is about the time you will be looking at for useable leafmould, but if you want really fine stuff for potting compost it might need another six months. If you use just Oak or Beech it may even take a little longer as they are a lot harder leaf.

I hope you get some replies - bought some posts today to go with some spare chicken wire. Just got to go road sweeping now!

Hi Monika,
I gave up making leaf mold using a cage some while back. Instead of a cage I collect the leaves and put them into Black Polythene Bags and seal the top and put a fork through the bottom a couple of times and this seems to attract the worms. I simply stack the bags, mainly on the ground but sometimes two high, and the worms still seem to find them. I leave them for a couple of years and then use them. I must confess that I only use them as a ground conditioner and do not attempt to make any seeding compost.
JB

OH : we crossed in the post last night, do you put a carpet on like the compost heap or leave the top open?

Afternoon Geoff, i don't put a carpet on top, but as long as the leaves are damp, i would have thought a carpet might even help to speed up the decomposing process.

Happy collecting, do you know i still love to walk from one end of the village to the other through the leaves in the Autumn.

I use a mix and - as above - compressing does help. Last yer I collected in piles and cut up with rotary mower before putting on heap... and this reduced volume and speeded up decomposition ... but very time consuming so not this year.

I also cover with urine or turkey dung or both to speed rotting.

We have a mix: oak, ash, sycamore, beech, hawthorn, mountain ash , damson and apple. Seem to rot ok..

Our local council drops loads off at our plots that are collected at the local park. I just put it into a compost bin made from pallets and leave it for a year. Its volume drops tremedously as it rots.

Here is leafmould made from last years leaves:-

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/2007/1 ... -room.html

I think any deciduous leaves will be OK. I once tried to compost down some laurel leaves and they were as tough as old boots. Holly leaves too take ages to rot down.

Thanks for all your hints. I have tried to make leafmould in punctured plastic bags before (like Johnboy suggested) but it seems to turn into a slightly slimy mess or it did with me, anyway. I thought the extra air through the wire might help to avoid that. So I will try the 'cage' method this year but press it down well. If I remember, I will post a follow-up next year and compare!

Hi Monika,
It maybe true that they go through a slimy stage but I think that the worms may not be getting to them. I leave mine for at least a couple of whole seasons and therefore cannot really say if mine get slimy or not. It is really something I do and then forget the bags and when I finally remember them they seem to be fine. I heap my grass cuttings and they go through an exceedingly slimy phase but ultimately that passes and from then on they give good a soil improver so I suppose it is the same as leaves.
I feel that the process takes a long time and if they appear slimy tie the bag up again and leave for another year as I can assure you the method works.
JB.

Johnboy, I thought the idea with leafmould was that it isn't worms that do the work but fungi and bacteria and therefore the action was quite different. And I thought the bags might be too airless to allow the fungi and bacteria to work. But I'll tell you what: I will fill my leaf cage and will also fill some bags this year - there are plenty of leaves about.

Hello Monika
I use those huge builder's bags (the ones that sand is delivered in nowadays) for leaf mould. I use a road pins (3 ft steel rods with a hook at one end) on the bag handles to hold the bag open. I water it while its being filled then when its nearly full take the pins away and loosely tie the handles together. Makes beautiful leaf mould in about a year as the bags are made of open weave stuff so they never go slimy inside but rarely dry out.

John

Hi Monika,
What you say is certainly true but when I eventually empty the bags there is always a mass of worms that come from every bag so I suppose it is a combination of the both. Certainly worms take leaves into the ground when they fall on the plot so they are not averse to leaves. Normal degredation is generally initiated by fungi and bacteria in a normal compost heap then the little wrigglers do their bit.
JB.

That explains it. so, as I said, I'll try both methods this year. and, John, at the moment we don't have a builder's bag but that sounds a good idea, too. By the way, road pins are really useful things on the allotment. All our wire netting (which we need as double protection against rabbits, jackdaws and partridges) is held up by road pins because they don't rot and are easily driven into the ground.