-EP252 Creating Quality Leaf Mould, Home Composting & More

Could your garden flourish with only a sprinkle of fallen leaves? Unlock the secrets of creating nutrient-rich leaf mold to naturally boost soil health and transform your garden into a thriving ecosystem. In this episode of Master My Garden podcast, we unravel the art of turning autumn’s abundance into a gardener’s goldmine, inspired by a curious listener's question. You'll discover not just the simplicity of making leaf mold but also the patience it demands, akin to nature’s slow dance in the forest. As we embrace the seasonal shift, learn how to prepare your garden for the chill of frost, and explore the timely practice of bare root and root ball planting to ensure your garden thrives through the cold months.

Venture beyond leaf mold and step into the world of composting mastery. From the basics of balancing green and brown materials in your compost bin to exploring innovative techniques like the Bokashi bin method and worm bins, we offer valuable insights for every garden space. Whether you're dealing with a towering compost heap or trying to manage food waste in a small apartment, there's a method for you. With personal tips and tried-and-tested advice, get ready to revamp your composting routine and gear up your garden for the upcoming bare root planting season. Plus, don’t miss a sneak peek into our upcoming episode, where we'll explore perfect Christmas gifts for the garden enthusiasts in your life.

Chapters

• 0:12 Maximizing Leaf Mold for Garden Growth
• 13:29 Composting Methods and Techniques
• 23:43 Effective Home Composting Techniques

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

How's it going everybody, and welcome to episode 252 of Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode is another listener's question. So last week's one, actually, a good few people messaged to say that the episode has helped them in their quest to choose in the perfect greenhouse. And yeah, it's nice to see those messages after the episode has helped them in their quest to choose in the perfect greenhouse. And, yeah, it's nice to see those messages after the episode. It's one we had covered before, but I suppose, um, yeah, people think about greenhouses at this time of the year, so it's, it's a good time. This week's one is something similar in that we've covered it or kind of covered it in the past and or kind of covered it in the past and, uh, you know, we would have covered elements of it certainly before, so but nonetheless, it's good, it's, it's topical and and, yeah, another listener's question this week it's a strange kind of a week.

Speaker 1: 0:57

We've had some really heavy frost for the first time, which I know has kicked off a lot of the lifting of bare roots and root balls. They were sort of happening anyway, but root ball and bare root now is in full flow and after a few nights frost, but yet still, you know, there's still these very strange mild temperatures. It's, um, you know it's, it's a funny kind of a. It's a funny kind of a. November has been dry relatively, and relatively, or very mild I guess, for the time of the year, and I know a lot of people are seeing things still flowering that really shouldn't be flowering and so on, and it's causing a few eyebrows to be raised, but nonetheless it's going to shorten the winter, we hope. And you know, the further we go, the the closer we are to next spring again and and looking ahead. So it's good to see some nice weather and it certainly has helped, you know, with things like bulbs and it's definitely going to help now as well for for bare root season as well. As I say, that's really kicking off now. All the you know the fruit suppliers, the you get all your fruit at this time of the year all your trees, your hedging, all of that sort of stuff is is in full flow. So if you have any mind to do any of that type of work, now is the time to be at it. But to get back to this week's question, the question comes in and hi, john, in my garden I have a lot of leaves, want to figure out the best way to use them. I know obviously I can create leaf mold, but how do I go about doing that or how else could I use them? So it's a good question.

Speaker 1: 2:37

It is one that we sort of covered in parts before, but it's it's definitely something that's really, really topical at the moment. You know, everywhere you look there's fallen leaves gathered on the ground, and most trees here in Ireland have dropped their leaves at this stage, with the odd exception. I see a couple of, you know, native oak trees here holding the leaves very, very strong and actually still still quite green. Funnily enough, it is one of the later ones to to drop anyway, but it seems to be like really, really green and not very autumny looking yet. I know that's not the case everywhere, but a few here are like that, but certainly most other leaves have dropped off and a couple of kind of storms a couple of weeks ago really sped up that process and knocked a lot of them.

Speaker 1: 3:23

So leaf mold, as many of you know, is a hugely beneficial resource in, you know, in any garden, and the more of it that you can create, the better, and this listener obviously has quite a lot of them and they know that you know there's a, there's a benefit in it, and they want to know what's the best way of sort of processing it. And I suppose the question always comes up how do you go about creating leaf mold? And it's a very, very simple process, but it's a quite slow process and that's the key with it. So I'm going to talk about leaf mold and then we're going to sort of delve into other composting methods as well, and composting is kind of slowing down at this time of the year. The material that you have is reducing quite a lot, but it's also a good time to sort of look at your setup and maybe consider for next year. So leaf mold, anyway, for a start, is hugely beneficial and when it's fully ready, it's an absolute gift of a. It's gold for a garden. So it's. It has a lot of microbial, microbial presence in it or microbes in it, and they will really improve the soil health wherever you mulch over.

Speaker 1: 4:38

The thing with them is that they need time and the way to do it, I suppose, depends on the scale. So there's a few few things you can do. So if it's in a large scale, if it's in a large area and you want to use them directly in your flower beds, you can, but what you really need to do in a scenario like that is you need to mimic what would be happening in a forest. And what would be happening in a forest is you would get a light sprinkling. So under a given tree or under you know a canopy of trees, you get a light sprinkling. So under a given tree or under you know a canopy of trees, you get a light sprinkling basically everywhere. So that light sprinkling falls to the ground, sits there really really slowly over time, breaks down and eventually becomes, becomes the soil and you know you end up with a really fungal, rich, really healthy soil from that. But the key to that is the small, thin layering of it.

Speaker 1: 5:32

So, if you can envisage that in terms of your flower beds, there's a few things you can do. So, number one you can take these leaves directly and mulch them directly onto your beds, even into your pots, but but on a really, really thin layer. And the thing about it at this point in time is that some of them might be still quite light and crispy and dry and they can get blown around. But if they're already a little bit damp. If you put a light layer all over your beds and when I say a light layer, like I'm talking a few centimeters they will decompose over the next sort of eight to ten months, twelve months, and they will feed your soil in a great way. But the key there is not to add a huge amount. So it's a really, really thin layer, mimicking what you would see in a forest or on a forest floor. If, on the other hand, you have a huge amount of them, then it's a great idea to take advantage of them.

Speaker 1: 6:28

So if they're gathering on your driveway or, you know, in your, in your yard or whatever the case may be, then gather them up and then we need to put them somewhere where we can basically create leaf mold separately now. Now you can compost, but again, a little bit like adding them to your flower beds. You can add them to your compost heap or your compost bin, but it has to be in really, really small amounts. You can't just load them all in or it will slow down the compost bin. So, again, small enough that if they fall on your lawn, you know the recommendation is to wreck them, is to is to rake them off. I personally don't really mind them being on the lawn. What I typically do is I'll set them more high and mow the grass, gather up those leaves and actually add that to the compost heap. So small amounts of leaves chopped up with the bit of grass and I'll add them to the compost heap. But I don't mind them being there. They're, they're perfectly fine. They'll break down there anyway.

Speaker 1: 7:29

Um, but if they're on the driveway, for example, I would gather those up and to create leaf mold, what you need to do is create a cage, so you have to have airflow, you need to lump them all together, you need to keep them contained because, as I said, it can blow around. So, ideally, what you're looking at is some chicken wire created into. You know, if you cut it and create a circle that might have a diameter of a meter or meter and a half, something like that, and you tie it off where you join the wires together, so you create this circle or a cylinder with your, with your chicken wire, and then you load in your, your leaves and you stack them up and you compact them and then just leave it, forget about it, and over time that will completely break down the, the cylinder that's full now with leaves will break down so much that when you get back there next year you might have maybe a foot or, you know, 30 centimeters, 45 centimeters of leaf mold in the bottom. But the key to it is time. So you're talking about leaving this for the guts of 12 months and if you leave it 12 months you'll have a really, really superb additive for, you know, mulching and and so on. That's, that's on bigger scale. If you're on a smaller scale and you want to just create a little bit, you can get it as simply as getting plastic bags like a bin liner, gathering up all these leaves, stuffing them as much as you can into that bag and then tying off the top of the bag. You puncture holes in it with a pen or your pencil or your finger or whatever the case may be, just puncture some holes into it and then leave it somewhere, like at the back of the shade, where it can't be seen. And again you're leaving it for that long period of time and then you take out that bag, you heal out, you know, again, 12, 12, 12 months ish. You'll heal out that and again you'll have really, really high quality leaf mold and this leaf mold can be used, obviously, for mulching, but if you don't have a huge amount of it, it can be just spread in a really thin layer and that will improve the soil life in the various beds where you add it. So it's a really superb, really superb thing that you can generate.

Speaker 1: 9:45

I know a lot of, say, bigger gardens, gardens. They will gather up all the leaves and create, you know, essentially a compost heap which is all leaves, and they will leave it for a long, long period of time and then at the end they will add in, they'll mix it with either good quality compost or farmyard manure or something along those lines, and that, mixed together, will be an absolutely phenomenally good fertilizer mulch and, yeah, something superb in your garden. So that's very, very simply how you create leaf mold and the benefit of it. But you can use it if you have small amounts, as I said, directly on the beds, but just don't put a huge layer there. Can you add it to your compost bins again? Yes, you can, but just again, in small layers and that's. You know, that's essentially it. It's, it's just, it's nothing else, only time. So it needs that 12 months because they do break down slowly. But when you give it that time, then they're you know it's a, know it's a really, really it's a really really good and beneficial additive to your garden. So that's leaf mold, really, really, simply, quite, quite quick. I hope that answers the question. Depends on the scale that you're at, but it's either you, you know, plastic bags, or a big cage that's created and and use it in that way and the, the lead on from that.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Then I suppose I'm going to look at composting and again, composting is something we've covered before, and leaf mold would have been something that I covered before and I had kate flood, the compost coach, on and that was a really good episode on the various forms of composting and, I suppose, the methods and so on, and so I'll talk about some of those again, and all of them have their place and you don't need them all in your garden, but they all have a use and they're all really beneficial, but you just find one that suits you best. If you have a lot of leaves falling, then creating leaf mold makes absolute sense, and then out from that, you're looking at the various methods of composting. So to look at them. Then you're talking about the, the compost bin. These are, you know the plastic type darlach bins, as they call them. They're just a plastic cone shape with an open bottom, little hatch on the bottom for taking out compost you actually would probably rarely use that hatch on the bottom and then a twisty off lid on the top that you take off while you're putting filling in the materials.

Speaker 1: 12:26

And people will often ask you know how do I use the compost out of one of these? And I suppose it all depends on, again, the amount of material that you're actually creating. So if you're in a very, very small garden, one of these bins is going to be perfectly fine and what you're going to do basically is you're going to locate your bin somewhere and the only key with it is to put it somewhere where it's not going to do. Basically is you're going to locate your bin somewhere and the only key with it is to put it somewhere where it's not going to be waterlogged, so on the soil, but in a kind of a dry area. And what you're looking to do essentially is you're looking to fill that bin as you go with a mix of kind of 50-50 green and brown materials and we'll go through those in a moment and you keep filling that bill bin for a certain period of time and it will start to compost. You know, from the bottom It'll be that because that's the first material in the heat will build up in there, it will start to break down, and this is where people you know start to to get confused when they only have one.

Speaker 1: 13:29

As I say, in an ideal world what you'll have is you'll have two and the way you'll do it is you'll have one filled. Then you'll start your second one and you'll start it by lifting off the bin off and leaving like a column of all that material there, the the fresher material which will be on the top of the heap. You put that into the bottom of your second bin and you keep going down until you get to a really fine composted material and that's your almost mature compost at that stage. Then you can start filling your second bin. You can put your plastic bin back over the little bit of what looks like compost that you have and you can leave that to mature a little longer if you want, or at that point, if you think you've left it long enough and it is fully matured, which takes, depending on the time of year, minimum of six to nine months, but 12 months again is the ideal certain number. If it's matured to that length of time, then you can use it directly onto your beds. If not, you put your first bin back over that and you'll allow that to mature fully for another couple of months in there while filling your second bin.

Speaker 1: 14:41

If you only have one bin, then the process is you take off the the you know, lift off the bin when it's full. Again, your column is formed within there. You locate your bin right again, right beside it. You scoop off the fresher stuff on top and keep going downwards until you get to what looks like compost. Then you close up the bin with the material that you've just taken off the top of the first heap and what you're left with is, hopefully, compost that's ready to use on the garden, and so that's how you do with one bin. You you rarely scoop out from from the bottom of out through that hatch door, as I said, because it's not what ends up happening is it's hard to get it out. You're also, at some point you're going to be taking out some compost that's not fully right. It's going to be you're going to be kind of taking it out, true compost that is mature, some that's not mature and it kind of gets mixed up. Funny. But by lifting off and restarting beside it you kind of are able to layer it yourself and get it, get it right. So that's, that's your standard compost bin.

Speaker 1: 15:55

Um, compost heap, then, if you're on a bigger scale, is essentially the same thing. It's enclosed, generally speaking it's timber or you can use pallets, and it's completely closed on three sides and then you put some sort of a removable front on that and that's your compost heap. They're typically, you know, a meter and a half by a meter and a half thereabouts per bay. Again can be a lot bigger depending on the size of the garden or the amount of material that you're producing. But that's typically what you're looking for.

Speaker 1: 16:25

And again, you're looking for, going in there, sort of a 50 50 mix of green and brown and, as I say, we'll go through the greens and browns in a minute and there what you do there is, ideally you'll have more than one bay and you you fill one with an even mix of green and brown as you go along and then at some point in time, ideally you're going to be keeping this covered as you go, especially here in ireland because you get a, you know, get a lot of rain. You don't want that heap getting saturated because that will take out the air number one. But it'll also cool down the heat. The heap a lot and we want to keep the heat in there as much as possible. So you fill that for a period of time, keeping the cover down in between either with a sheet of galvanized or a plastic cover or tarp or whatever you might be using, but just basically to not allow the rain go into it.

Speaker 1: 17:20

And again, at some point in time you'll close off that heap, you will begin your second heap beside it with the same mix of green and brown and then at some point in time you'll you'll give that a turn and that's typically, you know, four months in, three, four months in is the ideal time to give it a turn. And then, no matter what way you're doing it, you're going to need to leave that compost for kind of 12 months to get fully, fully mature. Might look like compost after, you know, depending again, depending on the time fully mature. Might look like compost after, you know, depending again, depending on the time of year. But it could look like compost after four months and winter time. It might take longer, could take six, seven months, but it's Looks like compost and fully mature are slightly different. So that's what you're looking for is that length of time, and again you're looking for kind of 12 months there before you're fully. You're looking for is that length of time, and again you're looking for kind of 12 months there before you're fully mature, and therefore you know kind of garden wastes. You know vegetable peelings, leaves, things like that, and they're suitable for most gardens.

Speaker 1: 18:27

I suppose one of the things that people are starting to really become conscious of is you know their household food waste particularly, and that includes your vegetable peelings, but it also includes things like you know spoiled food, maybe bones from meats and so on, and all of that. People are becoming very, very conscious of that type of waste as well, and there is ways of getting getting that, getting rid of that, and so there's a couple of methods. So hot composting is hugely, hugely popular now and it's something that I will definitely start doing because, again, I will be conscious of it as well. Don't have that much food waste. We're very good, and I'm particularly good, at not allowing not allowing there to be waste. I could eat something for for several days until it's gone. But yeah, you would be conscious of it and I think hot composting just gives you an extra ability to do, you know, to compost things that you wouldn't normally be able to compost.

Speaker 1: 19:26

And what hot composting is really? It's? It's the same process, but because you're able to get temperatures much, much higher, because you're in an insulated unit of some sort. So these can be. They can be like an insulated box, for want of a better word and they're typically, you know, like a polystyrene type box. It's probably not made out of polystyrene, but that's the the principle of it. It's a really tightly enclosed box that will get temperatures really, really hot, and that really hot temperature is is what allows you to compost food waste, so it'll take out pathogens and things like that that potentially could be in it. Another, another version of hot composting is things like the big pig, as they call them. It's a cylinder, a metal cylinder, with an insulated wall on it. So, again, we'll have insulation within the wall and then there's like a door, a hatch door, on it and you fill into that and you tumble it and you roll it.

Speaker 1: 20:31

The thing with hot composting is that you have to have a constant supply of material going in or else the compost heap essentially switches off and turns off. So you have to keep feeding that all the time and, as we mentioned in that episode with kate flood, these are your superb in terms of turning food waste, particularly into compost. But it can also be used for garden waste and it will create a compost looking material much, much quicker and it will take out all those pathogens again a little bit like all of these. What you're saying is that it's still going to take. You'll create what looks like a compost in you know, two months, maybe you know around a really short time frame, especially when the temperatures get high. But what comes out of that will look like compost, will feel, be crumbly like compost, but it's not fully matured yet and, again, you still do need to give it that period of time. So when it comes out of that, actually you might put it into, you know, the the darlach compost bin or you might put it into a compost heap to allow it to just mature, to mature, because when it comes out it'll be typically bacterial dominated and as it matures further, up to the 12 months, then it'll become more fungally dominated and that's what you're looking for.

Speaker 1: 21:47

So that's hot composting and it's's a really, you know, in terms of food waste, it's a phenomenally good product and one that I you know that we spoke about quite a lot in that episode with Kate Flood was Bokashi bins. And Bokashi bins the principle of them originates in Japan and I got a sample of them and I was using them actually earlier in the summer, really, really well. So Ollie Green and Better Plants sells them. So essentially it's a. It's a small little little bin like like the compost caddies that you would see under your kitchen sink, for example, and on the bottom of it has a little mesh inside of it, and that mesh allows liquid to go through, and essentially what you do is you pack your vegetable peelings in your food waste in there and you squeeze it down with a tamper, so you're trying to get all the air out of it as much as possible, and then you shake on. Every time you put in a little layer, as in a few centimeters, you shake on a little bit of bran as a starter and this basically creates it's like fermenting for want of a better word within the compost bin, and the reason you have to is that you keep layering that one to the top and you fill it to the top, sprinkling it on as you go, and then it starts to release a juice which can be used as a plant fertiliser and, as Kate Flood said, is very, very good for adding to drains and septic tanks, because it will activate and will remove the the bacteria and it will remove any coatings on your on your drains and so on. So it's a really good addition for that. But by mixing it and diluting it really really well, it's can be used as a as a plant food as well, and I used them quite successfully earlier in the year and then I stopped doing it actually when when I went on holidays and just didn't reactivate it since, but they were working really well.

Speaker 1: 23:43

So you have two bins. You fill one to the top, tampon it as you go, sprinkling with bran as you go, and it produces this liquid that is very, very useful in the garden at some point in time. Then you leave that. When, maybe when the second one gets full, you will dig a hole in your garden and you will bury this, dig a hole and then just pour the materials from the first bin into that and cover it over with a good layer of of garden soil and if you rooted that out a couple of months later, all of the material would be gone.

Speaker 1: 24:14

And because it's because of the way it's being fermented it creates a smell, but it's not a smell that's attracting to rodents. And that's something that people are really, really afraid of when they're composting is that they'll attract rodents. But when it's fermented in this way, it does create a smell on the product, on the on the compost, but it's not a smell that is attractive to rodents. But when it's fermented in this way, it does create a smell on the product, on the on the compost, but it's not a smell that is attractive to rodents. So you actually don't end up with with problems much. So you dig a hole, you bury that in the ground and it's a. It's a Japanese type system or originally originated in Japan, and it's a really really good system that I used for the first time this year and, yeah, found it really good. So definitely that's a really good one and in a small situation that's a very good way of dealing with household waste.

Speaker 1: 25:00

You do need somewhere, obviously, to bury it, because you know you're going to have this material it's not compost when it comes out, so you have to have somewhere to bury it into the ground. That then will become know compost, but it's it's still a really, really good system. So they're kind of the ways um, I've gotten composting. Worm bins is another one well, not one I've used myself, but it's really really brilliant. Um, worm bins. You buy the bin, it has the different layers in it, you get the, the worms to to activate it at the start as well, and you're basically creating worm juice and you're creating worm castings all the time and these are hugely beneficial in the garden. As I say, I don't personally use it, but it's a it's a great. It's a great way of of creating quality, quality compost or worm cast.

Speaker 1: 25:52

And I mentioned earlier on about the green and brown, and again that's covered quite deeply in in episode 210 with kate flood. So essentially, what you're looking for is you're looking for green or nitrogen with rich material, and you're looking for brown, which is carbon rich material, and they're typically going to go in at a mix of 50 50. So in Ireland, here, particularly in the summertime, we end up, you know if, particularly if we mow our lawns with and collect the grass, we end up with quite a lot of green material and not so much of the brown material, and that's why it's useful to keep something like maturing wood chips or something like that close by, because that's a good balancer and will give you your brown material. Other brown materials include cardboard, you know, brown cardboard, wood chip, some dry leaves, that's. You know. That's the type of brown material you're also looking at In green.

Speaker 1: 26:51

You're looking at, you know, grass, grass, vegetable clippings, leaves off of plants, deadheading of flowers or leaves, anything like that, anything that's green and wet for want of a better word that you know that typically falls under the green category, and dry and brown sort of fall under the brown carbon rich category and you're looking for a sort of a 50 50 mix there. Then, typically, typically, you're looking for that. But if you go slightly out of kilter it's not too bad. But if you, if you end up with a huge amount of green, the, the heap will become anaerobic and sludgy and that's not what you want. So, yeah, it's a. It's a simple process and that episode 210 is really worth listening back to. So that's kind of your, your leaf molds and your composts, the. The question only related to leaf mold, but I do think that you know, composting sort of ties in with that, because we're going to use these all for mulching beds or improving the soil health, and that's that's usually important. So it's good to good to tie them in.

Speaker 1: 27:59

Um, coming up soon I'm not sure when it'll be released yet, but the christmas gifts for gardeners this year's edition, looking forward to that and have a couple of guests lined up for that and uh, yeah, I'm sure it'll be quite similar to other years, but it's still going to be. Yeah, it's interesting every year to hear that there's always a few new and and different things on there. Um, as I said, bare root season has really kicked off. So if you have any mind to do hedging trees, shrubs, fruit garden, anything like that, now is the time. Get out, get out and get it done when it's when it's nice and dry. And yeah, as I say, it's all. It's all kicking off now. And that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.