This time of year it is a great time to start preparing your soil for the next growing season. A few weeks ago I spoke about how I prepare my garden beds using mulch to add fertility over the winter. After putting down mulch on all of my garden beds and making my hot compost I was left with a few bags of autumn leaves.
With this surplus today I thought I would show you how I make leaf mold and some of the value its use in the garden can bring.
What is Leaf Mold?
Leaf mold is compost that is made when fungi are responsible for the decomposition process of high carbon materials such as autumn leaves. [1]
The key benefit of leaf mold is that it when completed it contains humus.
Adding humus to soil helps alleviate soil compaction improving root penetration. Humus helps bring air, water and nutirents into the soil while acting as a habitat for bacteria. At a cellular level humus is the hollowed out shells of once living cells that act as a sponge in the soil holding moisture and nutrients in place that would otherwise leach out.
Leaves also come with a large number of essential and beneficial elements. Trees take up the nutrients from the soil and subsoil and incorporate them into the wood and the leaves. As the leaves fall in the autumn those elements are left in the tissue.
Last year we tested 4 common species of autumn leaves in my area including Birch, poplar, apple and russian olive. Maxxam analytics found that leaves have 10/15 commonly tested for trace elements that are essential or beneficial for plant growth.
The additional nutrients are easily incorporated into the nutrient cycle as the leaves break down. This is important as the same elements from the parent material that originally formed the soil in my area has taken over 10,000 years to release nutrients to the soil and as the soil is close to chemical equilibrium the process has slowed.
The fungi that dominated the decomposition process of our leaves will once applied to the garden help support the fungal populations in the soil to break down complex organic matter. Fungi can also form a mycorrhizal relationship with plants allowing them to access harder to reach nutrients and water.
In order to make sure that fungi are responsible for breaking down the leaf or woodchip material it is fairly simple. All you need to provide to make leaf mold is three factors carbon in the form of leaves, fungi and moisture.
The simplest method to make leaf mold is take a carbon rich source like autumn leaves or woodchips and simply pile them in an area of the garden where they will not get in the way. Usually you don’t need a nitrogen source but if you do it will speed up the decomposition process a little.
You don’t have to worry about applying fungi to the leaf pile. Your garden already has spores all over and they will inoculate the pile.
Lab Results:
Autumn Leaves:
http://www.albertaurbangarden.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/150110_AlbertaUrbanGardenCertificateofAnalysis-RevistedReport.pdf
References:
[1] Definition of Leaf Mold
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_mold
[2] Definition of Humus
http://education.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/humus/
[3] Humus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humus
[4] Wood Ash Fertilizer Potential
http://learningstore.uwex.edu/assets/pdfs/A3635.pdf
[5] Parent Material Degradation
https://passel.unl.edu/pages/informationmodule.php?idinformationmodule=1130447038
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