Leaf-Mould And Compost

This week Dirty Nails has emptied his compost and leaf-mould bins. He makes these containers cheaply and simply with old wooden pallets. These are set on end in a square and lashed together with strong wire. They are functional and well ventilated. He has his bins adjacent to each other so they can be easily worked together.

The leaf-mould is from last season’s fall. Although it is not entirely broken down, it is rich, dark and crumbly. It is a lovely soil conditioner and good moisture retaining medium. Dirty Nails is an avid leaf collector during the autumn months and will scavenge the fallen bounty from almost everywhere and anywhere, except the sides of busy roads and woodlands. Roadside leaves are liable to be polluted and are best left alone. Those falling in wooded areas should be respectfully passed over also. They are an important part of the woodland cycle of life and death.

The compost bin has been filled with everything green over the last couple of years except potatoes and tomatoes (which are prone to carrying diseases), and particularly invasive weeds such as horsetail, bindweed and couch grass. Dirty Nails is always amazed to see how his compost heap can reduce from overflowing to half-full in a matter of days.

The leaf-mould is dug out first and wheelbarrow loads deposited on bare soil in the veg patch. The top of the compost heap, which has not yet rotted, is removed into this space when it is empty. Underneath is a sweet smelling, fertile mixture which he spreads over the plot in piles also. As crops are cleared, Dirty Nails will cover bare soil with his home-made soil improving fertilisers, and leave until late winter. Then he will dig in the whole lot in preparation for another season of hopefully healthy and heavy-cropping homegrown produce.

Natural History In The Garden: Ivy-Leaved Toadflax

Dirty Nails is rather fond of a certain delightful little plant which adorns walls in the garden. It is ivy-leaved toadflax, and is a member of the figwort family that seeks a root-hold in cracks between stones and bricks. It tumbles out in straggly tufts. This is the end of a long flowering season which began in early summer.

Ivy-leaved toadflax sports dainty, pale purple flowers which are like miniature versions of the familiar garden snapdragon Antirrinum and, as the name suggests, has small ivy-shaped leaves. Once fertilised, this plant begins to physically curve its stems into the wall, pressing its tiny, ridged seeds into the cracks.

Vegetable Snippets: Some Facts About Leaf-Mould

Unlike green garden waste, which relies heavily on micro-bacteria to break it down into a wonderfully earthy compost, leaves utilise the rotting powers of fungi. Hence, leaf-mould is longer in the making, generally speaking, than compost. A heap of decomposing leaves should not be allowed to dry out, so dousing it with water may be necessary during a dry summer.

Leaf-mould is of only limited benefit when it comes to boosting nutrients in the soil. Apart from maintaining and enhancing the structure of the growing medium, and also its moisture retaining properties, the main virtue of leaf-mould is the role it plays in encouraging soil life. The largely invisible (to the naked eye) hordes of swarming microscopic and minute animals and fungi are an absolutely essential component of a fully functioning, healthy garden ecosystem.

Two words of caution, however – partially decomposed leaf-mould can rob nitrogen from the soil, and pine needles are strongly acidic so best avoided on the veg patch.

This bulky organic material can be easily made on a small scale with plastic bin bags. Simply fill a bag with leaves during the autumn, tie together at the top, stab a few holes in the sides for ventilation, and store out of the way somewhere. Forgotten about for a few months, the leaves will have transformed into a really useful mulch in a year or so.