So you want to make your own compost for your gardening projects, but you only have one thing to make it out of; freshly fallen leaves. Maybe pests are a huge problem in your area and so can’t compost your food scraps, maybe you just don’t want to deal with the headache of managing a pile,or maybe you just have tons and tons of leaves on your property and you want to do something better with it than sending it to the garbage collector.
It’s a common composting question: Can you make compost with just leaves?
The answer? Absolutely you can! In fact the planet has been doing it for about 6 billion years, we’re just going to do it on a much smaller scale, but we’ll do it a little faster too.
All composting encourages just a ridiculous amount of bioactivity, fungi is usually the last thing to move into a compost pile after it’s had a chance to burn itself out. A leaf pile is not going to get as hot as another compost pile might, that’s because it doesn’t contain the same kind of bacteria (thermophilic) in the same numbers. Instead, fungi do the lionshare of the work in breaking down the leaves, and fungi do not give off as much heat, fungi also work slower.
For fungi to work, it needs two things: Organic material, oxygen, and water.
So if we’re composting leaves, we’ve already got the organic material, the food if you will. Your pile will have plenty of oxygen at the beginning so don’t worry about that, water is the one ingredient you’ll have to consistently add but then we’ll be off and running.
But before we get into that, let’s talk about constructing your leaf pile.
The ideal size for a leaf pile, or any compost pile, is 5x5x5. So pick a good spot in your yard. Just remember that you’re going to have to haul your leaves to this place so pick your location accordingly, also when your compost is ready, you’ll have to haul it to your garden bed, so just think ahead.
Just a pile will work just fine, but if you want it to be a little more contained and have a little more structure, you could build a pallet compost bin like this one below, or you could build or buy a wire enclosure. These are just a couple of suggestions but use them for inspiration, enclosing your leaves will keep them more or less contained and less likely to blow all over your yard when the wind picks up. After all you just spent all this time rounding them all up.
Now on to the actual construction of the pile. Remember how water was going to be important? So put a layer of leaves down, roughly a foot thick, and then spray it down with a liberal amount of water. Add more leaves, water, rinse and repeat (so to speak). Water is critical for growing and healthy fungi so we want to provide the best conditions early. Covering your pile with a tarp will help keep the moisture in. Every few times it rains, just remove the tarp to give it a soak. Generally, a normal amount of rain will be enough to keep your pile moist enough but, if you find that your pile is drying out, spray it down again and give it a mix if you can. Your pile should always feel like a wet sponge, so check it every so often.
When will the leaf mold be ready?
A fully composted leaf pile will be soft and crumbly and will look much like humus or ordinary soil.
As with all kinds of compost, the finish time is going to vary, but generally speaking it will take 12 months for leaves to completely break down in this way. However, unlike composting some other kinds of materials (meat for instance), leaves can be added to your garden even partially composted, your garden will still benefit from the added nutrients, beneficial fungi and moisture retention. The leaves will finish breaking down in your garden and will completely disintegrate with time.
How to accelerate the process.
One of the reasons composting leaves takes so long is that leaves are relatively big. It’s a large, fibrous object that very small organisms are trying to break down. We can give it a head start by grinding up the leaves before adding them to the pile. The smaller particles will break down much faster and the overall surface area will be increased. This will massively accelerate the process.
Something to watch out for however, is that smaller pieces of leaf will have a tendency to matt together, forming clumps, and blocking out most of the oxygen. It will still decompose, but not as quickly. This can be easily solved by turning your pile every once in a while to inject some fresh oxygen in there. Every month or so would be more than sufficient.
There are a bunch of ways to grind up your leaves. My favorite way is to simply drive over your fallen leaves with a lawn mower. Whether you have one of those mowers with an attachment that collects the clippings or just one of the push mowers. It’s a very easy way to get what we want. You could also buy one of these leaf grinders, there’s a demonstration video below. They’re pretty neat, but every situation is different and you don’t, strictly speaking need, one. Just make the choice that works best for you.
That’s all there is to it! You can compost with dead leaves alone and make some awesome compost for your garden. Just another way that composting can work for you no matter what you’ve got available. So give it a try and don’t be scared.
What kinds of materials are you composting at home? Leaves only? Vegetable scraps? Everything? Let me know in the comments.
Happy Composting!