Leaves, glorious leaves

This autumn has been seriously wet and windy. Sodden leaves every where. Whilst its good to leave some of them on the beds and borders for hibernating insects and creatures, those on your grass, paving and drives must be used to make leafmould! A wonderful resource for your garden. A perfect seed mix, mulch and improver for soil structure due to its lignin.

Tree leaves contain lots of the nutrients that the tree has absorbed over the year. The nutrients are released back into the ground as the micro fungi help break the leaves down. The tree can then reabsorb the nutrients. For this reason its best not to collect the leaves from the woods but from hard surfaces and lawns. 

Gather your wet leaves, put them in a bin bag with a couple of tiny air holes in or store them in a wireframe. Its best to use deciduous leaves as evergreens take longer to decompose. There are a couple of giant redwoods in one of my gardens and those needles I store separately as its a good mulch for blueberries and rhodis and other acidic loving plants. Ignore the leaves for a year and a half.

When the leaves have rotted into a crumbly state where you still recognise them as tiny bits of leaves, shovel it around your plants and cover your soil with it. If you can wait longer, until the leaves just look like dark soily stuff then add a bit of your compost and some grit or sand and you have a wonderful potting shed mix for seeds and young plants.

I love it that by tiding up the garden I am also helping to create something highly beneficial for the plants I am looking after and not wasting a leaf!