Ruud Kleinpaste: You can’t go without leaf mold

This is an early warning for the coming month; You’ve heard me saying this once, you’ve heard me talk about it a thousand times: Those fallen leaves are worth their weight in gold. 

No matter if we are talking about deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves in autumn) or “ever-green” trees, they all need to replace these green factories that turn Carbon di-oxide and minerals into sugars and Oxygen. And the power plant that makes it happen is current sunlight (not fossil sunlight!) 

The old leaves return a lot of chemistry to the mother tree before they drop off (it’ll be used again to make new leaves next spring). But what the old leaves contain, as they float down to the ground, is mostly carbon. 

You may have heard about “climate disruption” or “climate change”?, a problem that is summed up by the fact that we have too much carbon in the air and not enough in the soil. 

Nature’s technique is to get that carbon back into the soil via trees and growing things called “leaves”. 

So here’s the best tip for the Planet and your garden: 

• Build one or more chicken-wire cages (1 meter by 1 meter and – say – one meter tall; Use some sturdy stakes to keep it all in shape.
• Now, when the leaves come floating down gather them up and chuck them in that cage and leave them there for a year or so.
• They turn into leaf mold, full of carbon and light in weight
• This stuff is the best compound to make seed raising mix (add some light, friable compost)
• Leaf mold also makes potting mix (with compost and fine bark)
• It also makes a perfect mulch on the flower beds (weed control)
• Leaf mold is a key ingredient for vegetable garden soil (add compost, mineral soil and fertiliser)
• It rejuvenates old beds that need some “time out” (keep it fallow)
• Leaf mold is perfect to make heavy, wet clay into a much better draining soil (increasing spaces in
• the soil)

It even does the opposite: making free-draining sandy soils a lot better at holding on to moisture (reducing spaces in the sandy soil).

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