leaf compost

[hawthorns]

ive just raked up a job load of leaves, bagged them up and punched holes in for ventilation. all i have to do now is wait. its first time ive done this. is it really worth the wait for potting compost. what other good uses can i put the resulting compost to.

[NOG]

I normally just bung them in the compost buns if there is space or rotovate them straight in to the ground.

[rustylady]

Leafmould (or leaf compost) is absolutely gorgeous. If you're making in plastic bags you do need to make sure the leaves are wet - if they're bone dry they won't do anything. Also - you start off with a huge bag of leaves, and when the magic has worked you end up with about an eighth of a bag of compost. I have made bags of leafmould in the past, but now I do what NOG does and put them on the compost heap.

[Madasafish]

I have a separate heap for leaves. 1 metre widex1 metre deepx 075 metres high - and growing.
I stand on the heap every so often to reduce the height and add occasional layers of cow dung (from field) or turkey crap (from my turkeys) to speed up decomposition. Next year I will then dig it all out and make a pile beside my raspberry canes. That leaves space (!) for next year's leaves.

I then mulch with the pile in about February when the heap is about 15 months old. Just about broken down...

Just now I'm collecting oak leaves: about 6 bags every 2 days... fortunately I have a big leaf grabber on the end of a aluminium pole as my back does protest now I'm growing old disgracefully.

[terrier]

In my last house I had access to endless ammounts of leaves and would fill several presses made from pallets, but as Rustylady says, once they rot down, there's not much left but give it a go, you've nothing to lose. Nothing ventured nothing gained!

[lainey lou]

I got some jute bags which each hold the equivelant of 4/5 bin bags worth of leaves, they can be just piled up and left to rot down for a year or so, I have become slightly obsessed with leaf collecting and have also been badgering my freinds and family to save all their leaves for me too. My kids just think I'm sad and embaressing!!

[Two_Sheds]

I normally just bung them in the compost buns ...

Yum. can you post a recipe?

[mat]

I’ve made a “bin” for leaves at the bottom of my garden - 4 bamboo poles, around which I’ve tied chicken wire, to make a cage about 2 foot square and 4’ tall. The great advantage of this is that the leaves get wet every time it rains. In bags, you’re going to have to water them - a lot.

It’s been so wet the last twelve months, that the leaves I gathered in autumn 06 were ready for use as leafmould by October 07! A very exciting moment, digging the lovely stuff out of the bin; I sieved it, using a fairly fine-meshed hand sieve, and then mixed it with sharp sand and perlite, to make a seed-sowing compost.

It works beautifully. One point I’ve noticed; the first few sowings produced a fair crop of weeds from the homemade compost. But after it had sat in a storage bin for a month, it presumably went “stale,” and the most recent sowings haven't been weedy at all.