4 EZ ways to Organically Enhance your Garden Using Leaves Compost Mulch Mold
Tips, Tricks
4 ways to Organically Enhance your Garden Using Leaves Compost Mulch Mold and more Today we are going to talk about a few ways you can improve your garden soil with fall leaves. Fall leaves are a great source of organic material and the essential trace elements your soil and plants need to thrive. During the fall collected leaves can be used in the following 4 ways. Prior to using the leaves it will significantly help if you break down the leaves using a lawn move, leaf blower set to collect or break them down using your hands. Often you can find bags of pre-shredded leaves on the curb side for collection. Mulching your garden soil will help continue to add organic material while suppressing weed growth and increasing water retention all while suppressing soil borne diseases. Earth worms will eat the mulch further enriching the soil food web. You can mulch any time of year making sure to keep the mulch from making direct contact with live plants during the growing season to prevent disease issues. Hot Compost is one of the fastest ways to enhance your garden soil The compost generated from a hot compost had far fewer diseases and volunteer seeds in it while providing bioavailable nutrients directly to your garden plants. It is simple to do and can be done any time of the year. Simply add roughly equal amounts of green and brown materials by weight or 1-3 ratio of green to brow material by volume. Let sit for 6-9 months over the winter and you should have some fantastic compost. Leaf mold is a much simpler method of using fall leaves to make a beautiful organic soil amendment. Simply pile leaves and keep the pile moist. Unlike a hot compost this process usually takes a year or more however you don’t need to add green material as the leaves will break down on their own. At the end you will end up with a fantastic leaf mold compost can be applied as a mulch or dug into the soil if you wish. Leaf mold is a fungal dominated compost adding humus to soil decreasing compaction and increasing water an nutrient retention. Winter Protection is important to prevent damage to your perennials leaves can be used in a 15cm or 6” layer to help trap air and insulate the soil from harsh winter temperature swings. Simply place the leaves around the base of the plants and leave until spring. In the spring once the threat of drastic drops in temperature has gone simply remove and place in the compost pile or leave a thinner layer of mulch. Alternates to fall leaves include clean or seedless straw or hay, dethatched grass or even shredded news paper This simple organic material is absolute gold for the garden. How do you like to use leaves in your garden? Some of my favorite childhood memories are of gardening with my parents and brothers. This channel is about low cost organic urban gardening in zone 3. I am by no means an expert gardener however I love to share my experiments and journey garden year round. Please feel free to join the conversation and if you think you might like this channel subscribe. Have a great day! Check us out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/stephenlegaree14 Webpage: www.albertaurbangarden.ca Google +: google.com/+StephenLegaree Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlbertaUrbanGarden Twitter: https://twitter.com/northern1485 Pintrest: http://www.pinterest.com/ABurbanGarden/
Comments
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I had a gentleman a few days ago trying to tell me. that leaves don't contain a great deal of nutrients. I've been using them for years that being leaves. And I've had much success using them. what I see people collecting them by the tons to go into landfills it makes me cringe
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stop going handful by handful and DUMP THE WHOLE BAG!
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you can leave them in the bags wet and then poke wholes on the bottom and stack them in a dark moist corner! they will become mulch with no effort or too much moving or work!
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Thank you again! I really like all the details on your explanations!
Amazing work! -
Muy buen dato, gracias aca desde el sur de CHILE...
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;) youve got a video for everything! Keep up the great work brother!!!
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just finished top dressing my containers with fall leaves. looks good with all the yellows, reds and browns. Hope the plants like it. Amazing amount of heat generated may help younger plants.
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I snagged about 14 bags of leaves last year from a neighbour ... and in spring I bought a blower-vac specifically to chop them up. I'm surprised about a few things ... one being that it doesn't take many leaves to create a thick mulch. The other being that they break down a lot faster than I thought they would! I prepped my corn patch by tilling in a bag of dry whole leaves, then made trenches to sow the seeds. I lined the trenches with shredded newspaper (I LOVE using it, it helps hold water and attracts worms) and then set in one of those little peat pots in regular intervals, then filled the pots with compost & the potting soil from my containers last year, then sowed the seeds ... as the corn came up I started mulching with chopped leaves, and they've been disappearing fairly quickly. I also mulched my garlic patches with the chopped leaves, I had to re-mulch them too! I wish I could get my hands on clean grass clippings (ie no fertilizer or weed killer) -- my mower auto-mulches, no bagging attachment or holes. I would prefer to be able to combine both leaves & grass straight into the garden -- I used to do it all the time when I had a mower with a bagger and I'm noticing the difference in my garden soil now being able to put green stuff in.
And I wish there was a better term for it than leaf MOLD -- we're used to mold being a really bad thing that can make one sick, so it's hard to reconcile in my head that it's good. -
I ripped up most of the weeds last autumn by the roots and raked up the all the leaves and weeds and dumped all of it into a small gully. Can I use it now as a mulch? What I mean is how much chance is there of the weeds growing back? Does letting them decompose for a year in a compost pile of leaves kill the seeds and roots of the weeds or not? I don't want to spread the mulched leaves and weeds and get another crop of weeds. What was curious about these weeds is that I raked them up and the leaves 1 week after I had ripped them out by the roots and when I turned them over they had already black. Is this normal? The stems, everything had turned black.
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Hello Steve Nice video, well presented.
I am short on space and have no room for a compost pile so I have been busy chopping a mix of leave and grass and seaweed to put a few inches on top of my raised vegetable beds to overwinter. Using rain to wet it and turning it regularly and with the help of the worms and bacteria I am hoping to accelerate the composting process so that the beds will be fully charged for the next growing season. -
Excellent video! I like to sheet compost my garden with Fall leaves.
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Hi Stephen! Nice video! What is your opinion on using oakleaves for composting and mulching the garden? Greetings Stephan
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What is a hot compost? How does it differ from an ordinary compost? Is it an enclosed compost (no air)? How can it be made?
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Excellent info bro :)
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I am using one of the raised beds at home to put the leaves I have from our one tree. I guess in the spring I can just bag what has not broken down and save it til fall. I have only added our daily coffee grounds to this pile
Cheers
Harold
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My neighbor just dumped 10 wheelbarrows full of maple leaves for our garden! We have mainly evergreen trees so I'm thankful for our nice neighbors :)
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I somehow missed this one Stephen. Never the less, it was very good info as usual.
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Thank you for your interesting information. About leaf mulching.
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Shredded leaves make a great alternative to peat moss or coconut coir for conditioning soil and helping get the loamy consistency that plants thrive in.
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Fall leaves are absolute gold for the garden. Check out these 4 easy ways to organically enhance your garden!
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http://youtu.be/PiG2Buji6K8
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