A morning with carbon

On Saturday morning, I captured the free carbon resource in my neighbourhood. That is to say, I bagged up a load of dry leaves to make leaf mould.

Last year, I collected fallen leaves from a group of cherry trees in the neighbourhood and mixed some into my compost bins and put others directly on my garden as mulch. The mulched ones dried out and blew about, making a bit of a mess in the garden. Some of them rotted down though, adding a nice layer of brown, worm-rich soil on top of the beds.


The leaves clog up the drains and look 'untidy'. So all the people who passed me and saw me assiduously 'clearing the drains' said encouraging things like 'Oh that looks much better now, nice work!'


The leaves were a very mixed bunch with nice, woody, spicy smell. Some of the trees are the ones they put in gin (juniper?) They were very dry, so I watered them with a few watering cans worth of water from my rainwater butt and sealed up the bags to let the leaves soak.



I also got a couple of bags of sodden cherry leaves that the neighbourhood leaf gatherers keep stored in a large container, and took the lot to the plot. There I erected a rough wire frame and built a pile of leaves interspersed with layers of soil. Hopefully in about a year's time, I should have a pile of leaf mould, assuming I can keep the pile sufficiently damp.