Making Leaf Compost

Are you faced with a lawn and a driveway covered with leaves? Does your heart sink at the thought of spending the next few weeks sweeping them up only for the ground to be covered again the next morning?

You may be forgiven for feeling that Americans have the right of it when they refer to Autumn as Fall!

But let’s look at this from a different angle. Let’s consider making leaf compost.

All those leaves can provide you with delicious homemade compost to enrich your garden soil and benefit your plants. So, here’s how to go about turning annoying leaves into plant food.

autumn leaves, garden path, Photo by Craig Tidball on Unsplash

What type of leaves do you have?

What sort of trees do you have, deciduous or evergreen or both? Deciduous will only drop their leaves in autumn; evergreen shed all year round.

The trees you have will give you a neutral or more acidic mature leaf compost. Conifer trees and hedges will give you a leaf compost to use for acid loving plants such as Rhododendrons and Blueberries. Not all leaves decompose at the same rate. For example, Oak and Holly take longer.

Ideally, you’ll compost these different types of leaves separately from each other. That way your plants will get the most benefit. And no, its not really any more of a faff. If you’ve that many leaves anyway, they’d take up the same amount of space if composted together.

Making Leaf Compost – Collecting up the Leaves for Composting

Different techniques and equipment are available, and one is sure to suit you and your garden situation.

Leaf blowers

Noisy pieces of garden equipment, they are now available as battery powered, which are a bit quieter.
Useful on loose lay surfaces such as gravel for gathering up the leaves into a pile.
Can be expensive to buy (the cheaper the blower, usually the noisier it is) and you need somewhere to store it. They can be heavy to use over an extended period, so try them out in store.
Consider it if you have a larger garden, lots of trees, a long run of hedge, a lot of evergreens. You’ll certainly get the use out of a leaf blower.

gathering fallen leaves into bin, leaf rake, autumn gardens

Rakes and Brushes

For lawns use a soft pronged leaf rake to gather up the leaves without damaging your grass
Paths and drives with a loose lay surface such as gravel will also be easier to clear with a soft pronged rake
Hard, solid surfaces, paving and decking, are best swept with a stiff brush. However, if the surface is also mossy, you may prefer to use a soft brush to remove only the leaves.

Leaf paddles

Paddles or scoops which make picking up leaves so much easier.
I have a tendency to refer to them as ‘leaf scoopy things’ and find them helpful for picking up cut debris throughout the year.
They come in different sizes, with slight permutations on handle, so again, try before you buy for comfort.
For those gardeners who are less able to bend, there is also a variation with long handles. These are also used by the more agile for reaching under shrubs, etc.
And inexpensive and worthwhile piece of garden equipment.

autumn leaves on water, Photo by Hannah Domsic on Unsplash

Nets

It is particularly important to clear leaves from ponds before they decompose and release carbon dioxide into the water.
Spread a net across the pond surface in late summer, this will catch most of the falling leaves.
Scoop the leaves up and out with a long-handled pond net. You may want to leave these on the side of the pond for 24 hours in case there are any small creatures caught up in them.

What is Leaf Compost?

Compost is decomposed organic matter which gardeners use to improve the health, nutrient levels and texture of the soil in their gardens.
The basic rule for making compost is to have a roughly 50:50 ratio of green, nitrogen rich material to brown, carbon rich material.
Dead and dying leaves are carbon rich as the protein / nitrogen molecules break down rapidly as part of the decaying process, leaving carbon molecules.
Leaf compost is where leaves are composted separately to the rest of the organic material you’re composting.
Shredded leaves will decompose faster
During the lawn mowing season, it’s useful to add dead leaves to your grass clippings as part of your carbon: nitrogen mix. Personally, I like to keep this mix in a separate compost to the general compost.
Most green leaves can be added to your ‘normal’ compost.

Leaves to be wary of or that need different treatment

The following contain a seed suppressing enzymes and other potential toxins to plant life. They can be used in small quantities in your leaf compost or general compost. For larger amounts, I would recommend disposing of at your local council facility, or using around the parent tree as a mulch, as its not endemic to its own species.

Acacia
Black Walnut, Juglans
Eucalyptus
Holly, Ilex
Juniper
Laurel
Oak, Quercus

Conifers are best composted on their own. They can take 1 – 2 years to decompose but when they have, provide an acidic compost which is ideal for other acid loving plants and woodland gardens.

compost in compost bin with dried leaves, recycling in your garden, grow your own

Making Leaf Compost

Collect your leaves into special leaf compost bags (loose woven jute) or black bin liners.
If you have lots of leaves, or prefer to keep them tidy, then use a leaf compost bin. This is a bin made of mesh and if you’re feeling in a diy mood, easy to make from chicken wire or other mesh and some pieces of 2’ by 2’ wood. Or you could use straight (ish) branches that you’ve pruned from a tree.
Dry leaves should be moistened when you’ve bagged them up.
If using bin liners, puncture the sides to allow air to circulate.
Leave the leaf compost in the garden untouched for 12 – 24 months, depending on tree species. The longer you leave it, the finer the material will be.

Once broken down, and composted, the leaf mould can be used in many ways in the garden. For example: –

To mulch around plants, as a soil improver.
Dug into vegetable gardens.
Added to the planting hole when planting trees and shrubs.
Finely sieved it can be used as part of your soil mix for seed sowing.

Making leaf compost is one way to recycle in your own garden. It should enable you to look at those falling leaves in a different way: – they’re going to turn into food for your plants.

Hopefully this has made you look at your leaf covered lawn with a different eye and encouraged you to try making leaf compost!

Do you need more help? Ask about Plews Gardening Lessons and Courses

How to Make Compost
Lasagna Gardening – Growing Methods for Gardeners
What is Organic Gardening?
Go Wild for Worms in Your Garden
Soil – the plant food in your garden

Thanks to Sadis Helvigs, Hannah Domsic, Ricardo Gomez, Scott Webb for sharing their photos.