Making leaf mould & a recipe for potting compost

Leaf mould is a lovely old fashioned term, and brings to mind old Estate gardens and poorly paid, overworked garden boys.  It often appeared as a magic ingredient alongside weathered soot and wood ash and ground up toe nails!

But for us it is a natural plentiful resource and a vital ingredient in our potting composts. Over the years we have steadily reduced the amount of peat in our mixes and leaf mould is really useful.

The native trees that shed their leaves for us are Hazel, Birch and Oak, and of course we are a garden and we also have lots of Maples, Cercidiphyllum , Chestnut and Larch.

The leaves fall onto beds and along the paths.
This make for easy pickings and any dry day from late October onwards, there is often someone out there, with a bucket, a rake and a collection old compost bags.

Rebecca hard at work with the rake

The leaves are poured out into compost bins constructed from wooden pallets and when we have a bumper year, we make wire netting cages to take them all.  

There they sit for 2 years, slowly mouldering.
Each leaf has its own characteristics.
Oak is tough and takes 2 years to rot down.
Hazel is much softer and takes a year to 18 months.

Inevitably there is the odd holly leaf in the mould. They are a pain, literally.  They are always a surprise, and take forever to rot so they retain all of their prickles. Again natures wee joke.

Leaf mould is also a great mulch, in fact it is nature’s mulch in our woodlands
We like to return some to the beds every year.

Here’s our recipe for general purpose potting compost

Sieved Leaf Mould 1/3^rd
John Innes No3 1/3^rd
Grit/Gravel 1/6^th depending on the plants to use it
Fibrous Compost 1/6^th to 1/3^rd (You could use peat, but there are now many more sustainable alternatives available)

^{Happy gathering,  M}

^{For more advice about the benefits of leaves read Donald's Autumn Blog from 2009}

^{Love Your Leaves}

Taking it Sloe

Every year we try to find the time, we try to rustle up some sloe gin, and it is unbelievably delicious. It is wonderful how such a sour berry with little initial promise can flavour gin so perfectly, taking away the harsh alcoholic edge and making the most mellow fruity scrumptious warming winter drink I have ever come across.

This year the crop is outstanding, I have never seen such an enormous amount of sloe berries on the trees and it makes for relatively easy picking. The long spines that normally slow the whole process down are less of an issue when you can grab a whole handful of berries in one go and substantially decreases the picking to swearing ratio. One of our oldest birches was brought down by Hamish and his chainsaw this week, it had sadly given up the ghost in the summer and we thought it wise to bring her down before the winter winds did it for us and perhaps damaged the shed and anyone standing close by in the process. So now we have a gap in the garden and a big pile of birch wood for burning.
Whenever something dies in the garden it is a great opportunity to look at the space that it creates and think about new ideas, and maybe a makeover for the area around it.