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Old 06-02-2003, 07:01 PM
paghat
 
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Default leaf mold and compost

In article , "mmarteen"
wrote:

I just finished reading Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman (not that my
expectations are that high here in MN) and he advocates using scraps and
straw to make compost and using leaves to make leaf mold. Leaf mold seems
to be a much more lengthy process from the way he describes it in the book,
where you have to keep leaves sort of composting by themselves for over a
year.

If I am already going to make compost and I am not running an organic farm
like Coleman, should I try to make leaf mold or just compost some and bag
the rest? Opinions?

Other than chopping up the leaves, is there anything else I can do to make
the process go faster? For example, will a tumbling composter, either
storebought or homemade, make the process go faster just as with compost?

mm


If you built a wide round wire bin five feet tall & filled it to the top
with leaves, by the time they were leafmold, the pile would have reduced
to less than one foot tall. Pure leafmold can also be had by cramming as
many damp leaves as possible into a black plastic bag with a dash of
nitrogen fertilizer mixed in if you really think it needs speeding up, &
shoving them into some out of the way crawlspace for half a year or so.
Pure leafmold is a more wonderful thing than compost per se. It's very
black & crumbly & makes a splendid attractive topcoating for the whole
garden.

It's also quite suitable to just rake the leaves in autumn into places
where mulch is needed & spread it out thinly between plants, letting it
turn to leafmold in situ.

I'd love to have a tumbling composter if they didn't cost much, but I
wouldn't waste its small space with leaves, which with our weather
patterns break down into leafmold by spring if left on the ground as a
mild mulch, & even as a pile don't demand stirring to remain aerated
enough to break down with narry an unpleasant smell.

Leaves of oaks, japanese maples, fruit trees, birches, beeches & so on
need no chopping up whatsoever, their break-down speed is quick
regardless. Enormous-leafed trees if the leaves are used as mulch might
occasionally be too much of a rain barrier if not chopped up, but I
wouldn't think it necessary to go to the extra work of chopping them up
merely to make leafmold in bags or bins or piles.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/