How to turn leaves into potting mix | DIY Garden Projects | Gardening Australia
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- Use fallen leaves to make leaf mould - it's the easiest compost you'll ever make and the perfect base for homemade potting mix and seed raising mix.
00:46 How to make it
- Bag It - Possibly the easiest way to get started with leaf mould is to fill large plastic bags with leaves, punch a few holes in them and place the bags in a shady spot. This is a tried and true method, and as long as they leaves are kept moist, you’ll have a fantastic usable leaf mould in around 6 - 12 months. Remember, the bags can break down to, so it’s important to check regularly.
- Tarp It - The same as bagging up the leaves, but on a larger scale - think a large leaf-filled bonbon, in a nice shady spot.
01:04 - Cage It - Using an upright roll of chicken wire placed in a dark, shady spot in the garden, pile as many leaves into the cage as you can - really pack them in. Just about any leaves will do (even Eucalypts) but Millie does avoid the leaves of the Plane Tree as they are slow to decompose and can cause allergies. The leaves must be kept moist during this process, and lining the cage with cardboard or palm fronds can assist in minimising water loss. - Cover the cage with hessian or shadecloth and walk away…. for around 6 to 8 months.
How to speed it up
- Run over the leaves with a lawn mower or run through a mulcher before bagging
- Add chicken manure or organic fertiliser to the pile
- Keep moist throughout the process
- Turn or fork pile every month
02:56 How to use it
- Leaf mould can be used anywhere that you would use a homemade compost, can be used as a mulch and as a soil improver. Unlike compost, leaf mould is quite low in nutrients, and rarely contains viable seeds, making it ideal for homemade seed raising and potting mixes.
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Pick up the leaves with a mower with a catcher. It's easier than raking and it helps break them down faster.
Love to hear you every time because you speak nice and clear and we'll you explain thing so that people like can understand. All of you people in the ABC garden show are amazing.
Thank you for that.
Jenny from Sydney.
This is amazing, thank you for sharing!!! I have access to leaves and water and nothing else - now I am excited that I can make compost!!!
Thank you, leaves are plentiful in my garden, I always need potting mix, and I love all the ways of gardening you and the ABC team show us.😃
There really are places in Australia that could pass for England or New England. Wow. I had no idea. Beautiful.
Love leaf mould to feed my soil but need to correct you regarding oak leaves becoming acidic as they break down. The opposite in fact true - leaves are acidic when they fall but become almost neutral once decomposed.
@@jomsies if the opposite of acidic is true, why would you add lime or b. soda?
Salute for ur self inspiration fr society as well Nation.
Love this. Sharing with my gardening group. Just what I was looking for. I've made my own potting mix for growing Microgreens. I used blended dried Japanese Knotweed Stalks.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching and for sharing the video with your gardening group.
Excellent gems
Nice presentation.
Thanks for this video. I will try it with leaves from cashew tree and beach almond. Iam living in a hot climate in Costa Rica , I think Ihave to cover up the mulch and have care of the moisture.
How am I finding your channel until now? Loved loved loved the soothing clips, straight to the point advice and tips! New subscriber here, cheers from Costa Rica! 💕✌
Thanks for subscribing and welcome!
Very useful video
With all of the venomous snakes in Australia, it takes someone with a lot of confidence to be raking dry leaves where those same snakes could be.
Not me folks. I like my life just fine without putting myself in unnecessary danger, thank you very much.
Have no fear, Ron - the Aussie spiders kill the snakes, then the trees get angry and stomp the spiders to death, so the fallen leaves are pretty safe to handle. As long as you keep a tame land shark beside you to drive away the crocodiles and killer koalas... 🤭
Seriously, though, if you tread heavily and make plenty of noise as you work, any basking snakes will have fled long before you see them.🐍👀
Great 👍 👌
Awesome
I hope things are going better in Australia.
Thanks for this terrific video! I love that I can just put them in a wire cage and wait. Everything else I watched wanted me to shred/weed whack/lawn mower them into mulch first. That's okay, but if there is a way to do it using patience instead of energy (from the grid) that seems better. :-) I live in temperate Oregon. Will it work just as well here or are the temperatures too different from yours (we wouldn't have palm fronds to put on top, for example)?
You can accelerate the process by shredding the leaves and mixing in something with nitrogen like blood meal, any kind of manure, even urine will work. It'll be ready in about 6 months. Some prefer the lazy approach of just gathering leaves in a pile and waiting. I respect that approach as well. No right or wrong there as long as you finish with the kind of product you're looking for. Leaves are the base of almost everything. You can use leafmould as food for worm and get wormcastings, you can even use dry shredded leaves as bedding material for the worms to avoid moisture to become too high when/if you add kitchen scraps high in water content.
Not placing it on concrete will also speed it up. Putting it on a patch of dirt basically turns it into a 3d matrix for worms and insect to come up to break it down faster. Try and see if you can get some native millipedes they'll shred it for free.
Thanks for a great video. So, I have about 18 cu. yds. of leaves coming later in the month. My garden is 1760 sq. ft., currently I have cover crop planted on it. What do you think of this plan: In the spring, I'm going to cut the cover crop, then spread 3" of leaves over it and cover that with 5.3 ounce weed fabric. I'll plant through holes in the weed fabric and let the leaves along with the cut cover crop decompose over the spring/summer. I already have some pretty good soil which started as hard clay. I want to continue to feed it and I have no place to store the leaves except on my garden. Am I crazy or might this work?
Tanks
water your leaves with urine,breaks the leaves quicker and your not wasting water flushing,is it ok to use builders sharp sand
You added lime to alkalyze the soil. Can a sprinkle of sodium bicarbonate be used as well?
Yeah bicarb is safe to use in the garden, it reduces acidity and is also good as foliar feed to minimize mildew and other fungi
No. It contains sodium which of course can damage plants. It also doesn’t have the same neutralizing capability that lime does. Sodium bicarbonate is far too weak. In addition, it’s very soluble, meaning it’ll just wash right out before it can even neutralize anything. Lime, because it doesn’t really dissolve in water, is able to linger around longer in the soil and neutralize the pH for longer.
It's stacked thick in a drain. Conserve energy.
Can I ask a question please? I put those leaves inside the pot at the bottom so that 1) when I put the soil it will no scape through the holes at the bottom of the pot & 2) it works as compo, Is that a good idea?
Mine didn't rot down but they stopped the potting mix falling out. So 5 out of 10.
What did you say? You’re making no sense.
What type of sand can I get from Bunnings please ..
If you can find it 'washed non-angular' or PGA. Sharp sand the rougher grade of sands used by bricklayers tessellates too well so doesn't improve drainage, more so on soil subject to compaction eg lawns (hence the PGA grade).
Don't add sand to clay to try and improve drainage, it just makes a concrete-like material.
Walnut leaves shouldnt be used in producing compost
I tried this recipe for Christmas lunch, my family weren't impressed. I think I put too much sand
What is the large bag you have?
Bunnings sells something similar Mr Tidy Garden bag
Can you use eucalypt leaves.
At 7:17 minutes she said - yes you can even use eucalyptus leaves
Towards the end, you said leaves have no nutrients. I was always told leaves are full of nutrients.
What say you, please?
It’s my understanding leaves should be used for gardening purposes in the same season as they fall. Otherwise they do lose their “nutritional” value.
Hello mam.... I want to start leaf mould organic compost business... Can it will be a profetible bussiness for startup.. Specially in India.. Plz reply
Great idea. Here in the UK our Councils collect garden waste. You could offer to collect leaves from organic gardens and give a small amount of money as a thank you. Or give them a bit of the potting mix at the end of the year.
@@ButterflyLullabyLtd let people pay you to take away their leaves. It’s a big annoying project for homeowners.
There's a service in California where you can organise a tree removal company to drop off wood chips at a location because it's cheaper than taking it to a green waste facility when they do a lot of trees at once.
"This is what you get after a year"...no thanks...too long haha
Eucalypt leaves, i would not recommend
uses plastic (organic carbon compound) to contain the leaves --> Nah, the plastic is *breaking down*, too bad
uses metal wire (made out of inorganic materials) to contain the leaves --> Ahhhhhh nothing beats the organic method!
The word organic is making me go mad, i think we gardeners should use natural instead. Do you remember from high school chemistry how many artificially made toxic molecules part of the "organic" class of molecules there are? Doesnt inorganic/organic chemistry ring you a few bells? It has 0 to do with people are calling it lately
I get the point of this video and i liked it but its just that the nowadays the word organic is being used to liberally
99% of fallen leaves are eucalyptus leaves... yes I know you CAN compost eucalyptus leaves but nowhere near as easily as you can compost THOSE leaves you show which are MUCH harder to come by.
Depends where you live, I think... Here on Oak Street in Manchester, NH, USA, we've got more oak leaves than we know what to do with, lol
@@benvoliothefirst Yep, but this IS Gardening Australia after all... ;-)
Round my way many of the trees are horse chestnut. 2-3 years if not shredded..
@@FrankEdavidson Yes shredding is essential with gum leaves too. The biggest problem with collecting gum leaves is separating them from all the bark which really doesn't break down at all.
Disagree 100%. I scrape up the eucalypt leaf mold from the carpark at work . It falls as leaves but within a few months it's 90% soil. I suppose the cars and trucks driving over it 24 hrs a day helps.