Making Leaf Mould

Now that you have your leaf blower there is more to it than blowing your leaves into a big heap and setting fire to them, or putting them straight into the compost bin.  No! you can make leaf mould with them.

Leaf mould is the ideal soil conditioner
which you can now have for free if or really cheap if you want to buy a commercial compost accelerator.

Collect all your leaves into black bags or a post and wire enclosure and leave them for a year to decompose. Unlike compost, that relies on bacteria for the rotting process, leaf mould is produced by a funghi.

Now to speed up the process you can add worms to the leaves, these can be retrieved from the compost heap or you can buy Brandling or Tiger Worms from fishing tackle supplies.

Nettles can be used to speed the process as well.
Stew your nettles in water for a short time and then pour the resulting liquor over the leaves, the nettles can then be put onto your compost heap.

If you have Comfrey in your garden then it can be used in the same way as nettles.

Of course if you don’t have access to these, then a shop bought compost maker can be used.