Despite today’s seemingly unending rhetoric about recycling this and recycling that, the process of recycling leaves in order to make Leaf Mould seems to be a process that passes most people by today.

But why? Leaves are free, they’re easy to collect, simple to store and process, and the resultant Leaf Mould is excellent for your garden whether as a soil improver, a seeding or potting mix or as a mulch. Oh, and it smells simply wonderful too!

But there is another important aspect of Leaf Mould that is worthy of mention. Collecting it can not only be fun, it can also be a useful form of exercise, and a good excuse to get out and benefit from some healthy fresh air at a time of year when we may well struggle to find the motivation to go outside at all.

So Leaf Mould is free, easy to make, clean and easy to handle, simple to store, good fun, useful exercise, saves buying peat, is good for your garden and reduces the need for watering. What more could you want?

What you should know about Leaf Mould:
* Leaf Mould is made from the fallen leaves from desiduous trees. Don’t use evergreen leaves or conifers.
* Making Leaf Mould saves burning or otherwise wasting perfectly good, natural, plant material.
* Some leaves rot more quickly than others.
* Because autumn leaves rot via the slow, cool action of fungi rather than the heat inducing bacterial breakdown of compost, they are not ideal compostable material except in small quantities.
* Shreading leaves will speed up the rate of decomposition.

Where to collect your leaves:
Naturally your garden would be a good place to start, but why stop there? We have friends who have a lane at the end of their garden which purely provides access to their’s and the other resident’s garages. It is overhung by horse chestnut trees which drop their leaves in their thousands in the lane every autumn. The wind and the rain do most of the work. They simply scoop up into black plastic sacks the piles of damp leaves that the wind rather conveniently deposits in sheltered corners of the lane. We do the same more or less everywhere we walk. The chances are there is potential Leaf Mould almost every place you go in autumn. You simply haven’t noticed it before!

What to do with your leaves:
When we have enough leaves, we mix them together which seems to aid their breakdown. We then dampen them one final time and add them back to the black plastic sacks which we tie loosely at the top having punctured them numerous times to allow airflow.

For those with larger gardens than ours, it is possible to make a simple wire mesh container using four stakes and a length of chicken wire. Simply sink the stakes into the ground in a convenient corner of the garden, wrap the chicken wire around them, fill it up with leaves and leave nature to do its work. Alternatively, you can buy a proprietory wire mesh Leaf Mould bin.

Using your Leaf Mould:
After a year or so, your Leaf Mould will be only partly broken down. At this stage it is ideal as a mulch, as winter cover for bare soil or as a soil improver.

After 2 years or so your Leaf Mould is going to be a dark, crumbly material that looks, feels and smells good enough to eat! At this stage your Leaf Mould will bear no resemblance whatsoever to its component parts such will be the change in its composition.

Now it is ideal for sewing or potting, on its own or mixed with sharp sand and garden compost.

Editor, Third Age.