Making leaf mould.

[Rob]

Almost a full your ago, I collected about 500litres of small leaves to try my hand at making leaf mould for the first time. I put it into several drums with holes in the bottom to drain excess water and add some air and give worms access. It has been stored in the shade, and I loosely put the lid on, and at first, as it settled more, I kept adding leaves to it, until I had no more to add. Recently I have noticed many trees now have mostly lost leaves, so I was thinking that I should check my old leaves, and depending on what I see, I should go out and collect more to begin it again. The 220L blue drum is only half full now, it did settle a lot, BUT, it honestly looks great, it is quite damp, and it seems to be very rich looking material, perfect for adding to potting mixes etc.

I will most certainly find more drums and collect as much leaf material as I can fit into them this season.

This picture below is what I started with, but this is just one of my 110L drums.

[Rob]

I have now 2 /220L barrels full of new leaves and every few days I look in to monitor the level of them, and add more when there is space from settling. Today I noticed a slight fermentation smell, it was not strong, but it was certainly noticeable. I looked it up, just in case I was misinterpreting something, but no, it is very real. To add a little to the process, I also add some goat manure to layers, but not much at all, and also some chicken manure 'soup', just to get things moving along. I would never have thought leaves would ferment, although I often smell old caprifigs fermenting on the tree, or on the ground under the tree.

I think this will be a great batch this time next year, or possibly before.

[arfabuck]

Are you aware of the JADAM priciples? That is the Korean natural farming system that explains what you are doing in detail.
I use their Gingko Biloba leaf recipe for all my natural insecticide sprays.

[Rob]

Yes, thank you, and I am happy that you have brought this to my attention. I do remember reading up on this a few years ago, and although I believed that I saved the link, it is long gone now, so now that I have JADAM, from you, I will look into it again. I have to say that I found it very interesting at the time, and it is something we all should understand more. For anyone interested, here is the link, https://en.jadam.kr/com/com-1.html and a video...

[Rob]

I found this book yesterday and bought it, hopefully it will arrive next week, and I am keen to read more about his methods.

[Rob]

With my new leaf mould making, I again topped up the 2 /220L drums with extra leaves, and it still smells of fermentation, and even better, I see worms still happy in it. I think it has pretty much settled now, and in a few weeks it may just need one more top up, before I leave it until next year, and start again.

[Rob]

The book finally arrived, and I have to say that some of these ebay sellers are very poor, to say the least. It actually was delivered by Amazon, but it took weeks, where buying from Amazon is very often delivered in 24 hours here, very interesting...

arfabuck, I very much thank you for pointing me in the direction of Jadam. I have never believed in all of the commercially available fertilizers, etc, so it seems I was already on the right track there, I just needed to refine my ways and thinking, and this will do that nicely.

The book is over 350 pages, and I have a lot of reading to do, but just from what I have read already, the leaf mould is a great resource, and I am very happy that I started my first batch last winter. The new batch I started recently will keep the process going nicely, and it is certain that this will now be a yearly process.

[arfabuck]

Glad you like it. He has other books published but unless you are going to specialise, this one covers everything.
Back in the 70's there was a bit of a cult revolution going on between Fukuoko's 'one straw farming'. KNF and Bill Mollinson's efforts to get his permaculture ideas across. We had a few disagreements!

[Rob]

I see is as a great book, and I think at the moment, this one will do nicely. I am collecting 2 screw top olive barrels tomorrow to begin making my liquid fertilizer, using only rain water, and before the rain slows to zero since I hate using tap water here for any of my plants/trees.

[Me Tarzan]

Have you looked into adding some Fermented Rice water to your compost? It's a nutrient rich microbe bomb. I done some testing with it in various sections around my yard and it' 100% works . It's just water you've rinced your rice in then left to sit for about 3 days . I just put about a cup full in every compost bin ...It's a method that's been used for thousands of years , can't believe i just used to poor it down the drain.