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Soil Quality & Composting
Have you got piles of leaves in your garden? Some may think they are a nuisance, but clever gardeners know that they are the secret to a happy and healthy garden. And they’re free! We call them gardeners’ gold. In this week’s episode Ben demonstrates exactly how to turn leaves into amazing soil that will boost your crops like never before. You won’t be-leaf your eyes!
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most people think leaves are a nuisance but today I’m going to show you a way to save money and grow bigger and better vegetables by turning leaves into Gardener gold they say money doesn’t grow on trees I’d beg to differ awesome is a time of huge excitement for me because I know there are piles of leaves just waiting for me to hunt down rake up and selfishly hoard to use in my garden these absolute Beauties save me so much money on soil amendments I can hardly believe that this abundant goodness is available to me every Autumn and all I have to do is pick them up nature builds soil with leaves like here in my local Woodland just take a look here at the top layers of soil just look how beautifully soft and crumbly it is this soil has been enriched over centuries as the trees above kiss the ground with their carpet of goodness the leaves here are taken down by all that soil life and magically transformed into this lovely soft Rich texture why wouldn’t we want this in our Gardens for this year’s leaf mold pile I am making a leaf mold cage now what this does is simply contain the leaves to stop them getting blown away by the wind and as they decompose they will also offer a home for wildlife what I’ve done here is I’ve hammered in four corner posts just so they’re nice and firm this isn’t an engineering Marvel by any means and now I’ve got this kind of old bit of deer fencing here you could perhaps use some kind of chicken wire or something similar and I’m securing it to the post and then I’ll wrap it all the way around the four posts now what I’m actually doing here you might notice is I’m raising it slightly off the ground by about 6 in or 15 cm or so what that will mean is that any Critters that want to walk in through the ground to res in the leaves over the winter can do that because this stuff won’t be touched for at least a year and now I’m just kind of tying on a makeshift little door like this and I’m going to create a a sort of Fastener by just weaving in a bamboo cane like this into the sides that way I can open and shut the door nice and easily it’ll just make accessing the leaf mold so much easier so I won’t have to kind of hover it over and dig it out I can just sort of scrape it all out when it’s ready there we [Music] go help I’m trapped you can speed the whole process up by uh including some sort of greens within your leaves for example grass clippings and a great way of doing that is just to put your leaves on the ground and then go over it with a lawn mower which will pick up some of the grass clippings as well now this will give a final product that is slight richer in nutrients so it won’t be suitable for all uses such as a seed starting mix you also want to make sure that your leaves are nice and damp these here are just perfect they got a lovely Sheen to them that will help all the melium of the fungi that will help break these down colonize your leaves but if they are too dry you can always water them as you fill now I’m going in little layers here and just spreading it out nice and evenly and poking it down now look what’s happened to my rake I managed to snap it does anyone else have this perennial problem of continually snapping their tools that’s me if you do find your leaf mold pile grinding to a Hal not doing much you can always try digging it all out and restacking it again which should introduce plenty of fresh air to reinvigorate things now between you and me I also like to go for a wee on both my leaf mold cage piles and my compost bins that introduces lots of nitrogen which really does help accelerate things I mean animals we in the woods so why shouldn’t [Music] we there we go now all we have to do is leaf this alone and let nature take over from here if you’re using our garden planner by the way there’s a handy leaf mold bin option that you can drop onto your plan and it’s scalable to match the real world size of your pile nice if you don’t have space for a leaf mold cage then an alternative is just to bag your leaves up now you could use an old bin or waste bag like this just stuff your leaves in fill to the top tie it off and then use a fork to puncture in some holes to let the air in but there’s only one problem with this more plastic in the garden which I know we’re all trying to move away from so a more ecological alternative is to use something like these gardening sacks made of J I believe and look they’re perfect breathable just get on and stuff your leaves in right to the brim fold them over or tie them shut and then stash them out of the way for one or two years in a corner of the garden leaf mold will help you create the most beautiful soil soil like a forest floor after one year you’ll have something a little bit like this a little bit lumpy still but just the ticket for adding to beds is a free and of course beautiful soil conditioner add it as a mulch established plants or over bare beds to keep them covered for winter or leave it for another year because after 2 years you’ll have something really crumbly like this that’s almost indistinguishable from soil now this stuff is perfect for making your own potting mixes and because it’s relatively low in nutrients you could even make your own seed starting mix and I’ve done a video on that which I will link to down below I like to gather my leaves from wherever I can Cs and hard surfaces in my own garden from Neighbors especially if they bag them up already or indeed from any low traffic area that I know is going to be free of fumes dog deposits and other impurities just don’t be too thorough leave plenty of leaves in beds borders and out of the way Corners as a home for wildlife now Critters large and small will use these leaves a as a warming cushion to sit out the chill of winter so spare them a thought too now I studied horiculture at University and for one of our practical sessions we pitted leaf blowers against rakes would you believe it rakes weren’t that much slower and of course they give you a free workout in the process I also prefer raking over leaf blowers because they’re quiet they don’t cause any pollution and they won’t disturb Wildlife nearly as much [Music] I love leaf mold because it’s beautiful and free just like The Abridged version of my book which you can get your green fingers and thumbs on simply for signing up to our video newsletter just scan the QR code or follow the link to bag your copy and delve into all manner of gardening projects to up your gardening game I’ll catch you next time
30 Comments
Water your leaves with your own personal water…
Looks like he grows coke or weed
Silly youtube internet man. You don’t need to tell me to pee on my neighbor’s leaves.
I'm converted! Would like to see you roll in it though!
i remember Bob Flowerdew scandalising the other panellists on Gardeners Question Time on BBC Radio 4 when i was a kid, by explaining how he would urinate on his compost heaps :p
i hord my empty compost bags. And then use them for leaf mould in the winter. It's plastic that would have been thrown away anyway. They are tough and hard wearing so they dont fall apart. They already have holes in to let the compost breath. And then when they get too tatty and torn, they just go in the bin or recycling, just like they would have done originally
I go past my toilet to wee on our compost heap when my girlfriend isnt looking.😊
Gardening a uni degree? you're having a laugh!!
Just a reminder – you cannot wee on them if you are taking medications apparently. You should check on this. Or on straw for growing potatoes and such. I’m not sure if this just applies to the straw bales or not.
You will be lucky to get 60ltrs of leaf mould from a cage that size and you are probably waiting 2years to harvest it
Shock Horror, you'll be promoting nasty climate change
The best part is peeWee in the hoods🤣🤣🤣
I don't throw anything away in the garden. I chip all the pruned branched and mulch everything else with my lawnmower. The perfect tool for "hoovering" everything up. Some plants, like the tomatoes, take forever to rot down unless you put them through the lawnmover first. I also pee on my compost! 😁 Great tips and tricks on this channel! Thanks for sharing!
Infotainment at it's finest. Cheers!
This guy is the English Alton Brown of gardening.
I like your idea of having a wee in the leaf pile but I'm wondering if there is a difference between urine from a male and from a female? I know if makes a difference with dog urine on grass.
If you pee in the compost doesn’t any medicine you take go into it? I’ve always heard that’s the problem with using human urine/feaeces in compost
I like to rake leaves into small piles and run the lawnmower over them. It mulches the leaves, saves me the wheelbarrow step, and speeds up the process by a year
What about fungus or ticks? I have pets and a manicured lawn.
You could need speed up the process at min 2:43, by simply opening your little gate and dumping the leaves directly from the wheelbarrel.
Sorry if that sounds too lazy.
Amazing idea
I wee in the woods. My wife prefers I don’t in the back yard. She doesn’t need to know.
Modern life is so artificial and detached from nature.
I still dont understand why people buy leaf bags to get rid of the leave. i just add shredded leaves to the 8'x4' x 2' raised bed which i compost chicken droppings. in the spring i have really great compost soils for the 14 other raised bed. with enough food to last my the entire summer and fall not buying any vegetables. and yes, i too "water" it with my human hose lol
I've never ever had 'soil' like that from a pile of rotted leaves ! Me thinks there's a bit of a con going on here. !
I adore your passion 😂 I am heading out now to make my own leaf composting container 👍🏻
Ive gone from collecting and putting leaves on the tree lawn to be picked up to just mulching them, ive also started plug aerating every fall as well and the yard is much less swampy and has a carpet like feel.
I never had room for composting, so what I used to do as a kid (I gardened since I was 10 or so) was to dig a somewhat deep, narrow hole in the garden, wherever space was free and shove some yard waste into it, compact it, then cover it over. I would do that repeatedly every few weeks, a different spot every time. What happened over a few years was the soil changed entirely. It went from a grey to a dark black. Not as efficient as a compost pile but it got there in the end.
Just call up leaves collection companies they will dump about 1000 lbs of chopped up leaves for free. let it sit for a year then harvest the compost. Wanna speed it up? Buy a blower aneration pipe and put it on the ground and tell them to dump the pile on top of the aeration tube.
My mom mows her lawn and leaves the clippings to enrich the soil….it works: when previously the soil was too poor to support much underground creatures, it is now is ravaged by moles hunting for worms 😢.She’s too old to tackle this problem and doe s not like killing the sods. Now the lawn is too bumpy to mow and looks unsightly……..
Your love of dirt has inspired me, thank you