The Clever Way Smart Gardeners Make Amazing Soil

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's gold. They say money doesn't grow on trees. I'd beg to differ. Autumn 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 posts 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 six inches or 15 centimeters or so. What that will mean is that any critters that want to walk in through the ground to rest 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 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 over and dig it out. I can just sort of scrape it all out when it's ready. There we go. Help, I'm trapped! You can speed the whole process up by 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 lawnmower which will pick up some of the grass clippings as well. Now this will give a final product that is slightly 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've got a lovely sheen to them. That will help all the mycelium 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 halt and 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 wee in the woods, so why shouldn't we? There we go! Now all we have to do is leave 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 jute, I believe, and look, they're perfectly 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 as a free, and of course, beautiful soil conditioner. Add it as a mulch around established plants or over bare beds to keep them covered for winter. Or leave it for another year because after two 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, paths and hard surfaces in my own garden, from neighbors, especially if they've bagged 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 as a warming cushion to sit out the chill of winter, so spare them a thought too. Now I studied horticulture 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. 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.