Not another boring "What you can do with autumn leaves" article

The garden is just under an acre in size and in one area there is a small wood,  mainly sycamore with some white beam and holly.   For two or three months every autumn, the wood produces lots and lots and lots of wet floppy leaves.

This is how T and I cope with the large numbers we get.

There must be wind eddies around the garden because in certain places large piles of leaves congregate.  They collect in corners on the drive, against the house, in the courtyard area and in a drainage gully between the house and the courtyard. In fact, they collect in large piles everywhere.

Fortunately, these heaps make the job so much easier and quicker for us.

I find the simplest way to deal the amount we have get is to have a weekly routine of raking/sweeping them up. This means that at least one day out of seven I do approximately 5,000 steps (according to my wrist worn activity counter) just sweeping up and putting them in the leaf mould store.

Here are our two leaf mould bins, T made them from unwanted broken pallets.

As you can see the bin on the left is full up to about 3 foot, the leaf mould has been rotting down since the previous year (in this case 2018 to 2019).  Incidentally, as the contents of this pile are fine and crumbly we have already started to use it around the garden.

On the right is the section for this year (2019 to 2020).  We have so many leaves which fall over such a large area that it  is not always time efficient to shred or mow over them before they go into the bin. 

Every week before adding fresh autumn leaves to the pile, I use the garden hose to drench the contents of the bin, I then sprinkle powdered compost maker on top of the pile. 

Next, I start adding newly collected leaves on top, occasionally we have to trample the leaves down to get them all in.

We do a final sweeping and raking session when we can no longer see leaves on the trees, and at the same time take the opportunity to tidy up the borders.

It generally takes a year to 18 months for the leaves to rot down to material which is friable and ready to use, however, if we use the compost maker the leaf mould is ready to use within a year.

I find leaf mould is incredibly useful stuff to have about and it’s totally free.   I put it to so many uses around the garden, once sieved I mix it with home produced compost to be used as a potting compost, I gently fork it in around plants so it can pep up the soil, or I use it as a mulch around plants.

I hope you found this post interesting and that it made you stop and think about what it’s like to own and maintain a large(ish) garden.  As with all gardening jobs, we have to think big and do things in such a way that saves time and, most importantly, doing them properly.  

 

Wishing you happy gardening in your own patch of paradise.