Gardening
It ’s that time of year . leafage are in rich provision and for those in the know , they are a valuable resource . The last two fall around this fourth dimension I have been scoop up sackloads of leaves in my local common .
Stored in those bin lining in an out of the way space , occasionally wet down , they have been slowly decompose into a useful production – leaf mold . look on the type and size of leaf , this process can take up to three years , so some patience is take . I recently prevail out of patience and decided to make use of the slew I cache two years ago . I feign that the necessary conjuration would have come about . It was sure as shooting much close to the desire end mathematical product than it was one yr ago .
In the one year one-time flock there were still many big pieces of foliage and plenty of leaf stems in grounds .
In the two yr old tidy sum there are fewer large pieces and much more of the crumbly diminished shard that I ’m looking for .
Clearly , though , it is not full decomposed . Rather than put them back for another yr , I decided to put it through a garden sieve . I let each bag dry out for a day or two to make this a fleck loose . The sieved textile is extremely fine and soft to the touch .
This year’s leaves
The larger pieces , peg etc that did n’t make it through the sieving summons are still useful . Some possible uses for this partially decomposed folio thing are :
I have previously used a bag of partially decompose leaf matter as an factor of the compost mixture for my fern planter living rampart thingy . The ferns seem happy enough . More recently I have used a couple of bucket loads as a duvet for overwinter Dahlia pinnata .
I have quite a bit of the finished mathematical product , I have more or less filled an sure-enough compost udder . I remember I will mostly use it for seed sowing in the new year . As it is calorie-free , fluffy and inert it makes a utter sowing culture medium , the raw roots can easily go around through it . If I have any left over I will employ as an element in pot commixture when it is time to move seedling on .
1 year old leaf mould
It has worked a delicacy . A twelve bags of folio have been boil down down to four , so not only will it rot down faster , I will be using less blank . Or maybe it mean I should be take in another duo of twelve bag of leaves !
I ’ll be back presently with more garden doohickey .
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2 year old leaf mould
2 year old leaf mould – sieved
