Every November there is a weekend where half the street is out with rakes and black sacks, and by Monday all of it has gone — bagged, collected, driven away. It is one of the strangest small habits of British gardening: we pay for soil improver in spring and throw away the raw material in autumn. Leaves are leaf mould waiting to happen, and leaf mould is the stuff that makes heavy clay workable and sandy soil hold water. It costs nothing but patience.
Make leaf mould, the laziest garden project there is
Leaves break down differently from kitchen compost — slowly, mostly by fungi rather than bacteria, and with almost no effort from you. The classic method is a simple cage: four stakes and a loop of chicken wire in a corner that nobody looks at. Pile the leaves in, tread them down, and water the pile if it has gone dry. Then walk away for a year.
If you have no space for a cage, the bin bag version works just as well. Fill a strong sack with damp leaves, stab it a dozen times with a fork for air, tie it loosely and tuck it behind the shed. After twelve months you have crumbly, dark, sweet-smelling material to spread on beds; after two years you have something fine enough to mix into potting compost or sprinkle over a seed tray. Oak, beech and hornbeam take longer; lighter leaves like birch and ash break down fastest.
