Love leaf mould to feed my soil but need to correct you regarding oak leaves becoming acidic as they break down. The opposite in fact true - leaves are acidic when they fall but become almost neutral once decomposed.
Love to hear you every time because you speak nice and clear and we'll you explain thing so that people like can understand. All of you people in the ABC garden show are amazing. Thank you for that. Jenny from Sydney.
Love this. Sharing with my gardening group. Just what I was looking for. I've made my own potting mix for growing Microgreens. I used blended dried Japanese Knotweed Stalks.
Thanks for a great video. So, I have about 18 cu. yds. of leaves coming later in the month. My garden is 1760 sq. ft., currently I have cover crop planted on it. What do you think of this plan: In the spring, I'm going to cut the cover crop, then spread 3" of leaves over it and cover that with 5.3 ounce weed fabric. I'll plant through holes in the weed fabric and let the leaves along with the cut cover crop decompose over the spring/summer. I already have some pretty good soil which started as hard clay. I want to continue to feed it and I have no place to store the leaves except on my garden. Am I crazy or might this work?
Thanks for this terrific video! I love that I can just put them in a wire cage and wait. Everything else I watched wanted me to shred/weed whack/lawn mower them into mulch first. That's okay, but if there is a way to do it using patience instead of energy (from the grid) that seems better. :-) I live in temperate Oregon. Will it work just as well here or are the temperatures too different from yours (we wouldn't have palm fronds to put on top, for example)?
You can accelerate the process by shredding the leaves and mixing in something with nitrogen like blood meal, any kind of manure, even urine will work. It'll be ready in about 6 months. Some prefer the lazy approach of just gathering leaves in a pile and waiting. I respect that approach as well. No right or wrong there as long as you finish with the kind of product you're looking for. Leaves are the base of almost everything. You can use leafmould as food for worm and get wormcastings, you can even use dry shredded leaves as bedding material for the worms to avoid moisture to become too high when/if you add kitchen scraps high in water content.
Not placing it on concrete will also speed it up. Putting it on a patch of dirt basically turns it into a 3d matrix for worms and insect to come up to break it down faster. Try and see if you can get some native millipedes they'll shred it for free.
With all of the venomous snakes in Australia, it takes someone with a lot of confidence to be raking dry leaves where those same snakes could be. Not me folks. I like my life just fine without putting myself in unnecessary danger, thank you very much.
Have no fear, Ron - the Aussie spiders kill the snakes, then the trees get angry and stomp the spiders to death, so the fallen leaves are pretty safe to handle. As long as you keep a tame land shark beside you to drive away the crocodiles and killer koalas... 🤭 Seriously, though, if you tread heavily and make plenty of noise as you work, any basking snakes will have fled long before you see them.🐍👀
No. It contains sodium which of course can damage plants. It also doesn’t have the same neutralizing capability that lime does. Sodium bicarbonate is far too weak. In addition, it’s very soluble, meaning it’ll just wash right out before it can even neutralize anything. Lime, because it doesn’t really dissolve in water, is able to linger around longer in the soil and neutralize the pH for longer.
How am I finding your channel until now? Loved loved loved the soothing clips, straight to the point advice and tips! New subscriber here, cheers from Costa Rica! 💕✌
Can I ask a question please? I put those leaves inside the pot at the bottom so that 1) when I put the soil it will no scape through the holes at the bottom of the pot & 2) it works as compo, Is that a good idea?
Thanks for this video. I will try it with leaves from cashew tree and beach almond. Iam living in a hot climate in Costa Rica , I think Ihave to cover up the mulch and have care of the moisture.
Hello mam.... I want to start leaf mould organic compost business... Can it will be a profetible bussiness for startup.. Specially in India.. Plz reply
Great idea. Here in the UK our Councils collect garden waste. You could offer to collect leaves from organic gardens and give a small amount of money as a thank you. Or give them a bit of the potting mix at the end of the year.
There's a service in California where you can organise a tree removal company to drop off wood chips at a location because it's cheaper than taking it to a green waste facility when they do a lot of trees at once.
If you can find it 'washed non-angular' or PGA. Sharp sand the rougher grade of sands used by bricklayers tessellates too well so doesn't improve drainage, more so on soil subject to compaction eg lawns (hence the PGA grade). Don't add sand to clay to try and improve drainage, it just makes a concrete-like material.
uses plastic (organic carbon compound) to contain the leaves --> Nah, the plastic is *breaking down*, too bad uses metal wire (made out of inorganic materials) to contain the leaves --> Ahhhhhh nothing beats the organic method! The word organic is making me go mad, i think we gardeners should use natural instead. Do you remember from high school chemistry how many artificially made toxic molecules part of the "organic" class of molecules there are? Doesnt inorganic/organic chemistry ring you a few bells? It has 0 to do with people are calling it lately I get the point of this video and i liked it but its just that the nowadays the word organic is being used to liberally
99% of fallen leaves are eucalyptus leaves... yes I know you CAN compost eucalyptus leaves but nowhere near as easily as you can compost THOSE leaves you show which are MUCH harder to come by.
@@FrankEdavidson Yes shredding is essential with gum leaves too. The biggest problem with collecting gum leaves is separating them from all the bark which really doesn't break down at all.
Disagree 100%. I scrape up the eucalypt leaf mold from the carpark at work . It falls as leaves but within a few months it's 90% soil. I suppose the cars and trucks driving over it 24 hrs a day helps.
