Leaf Mulch:

It's that time of year again when the trees become the most vibrant and beautiful canvas of colours on the landscape and then promptly dump all the leaves on our lawn.

We have a large front garden, and when we moved in last year, all we had to deal with these leaves was a Flymo, which was pretty much useless as the grass had not been cut for a year. So we had to borrow a rake and a barrow and spent hours clearing up the leaves. Never again we said as our backs and arms slowly stopped aching.

This year, we were lucky enough to get hold of a superb Hayter Harrier lawnmower. It’s driven so no pushing around, has a large capacity box, and a 3.5 HP engine. And best of all, it came from a skip. Amazing what people will throw away. All it needed was an oil change, new plug and the filter cleaned and it started first go. This has made a huge difference, and now all it takes to clear the leaves is to put it on a high setting and suck them up.

So, the plan this year is to take these finely chopped leaves and mulch them. I have picked up a whole stack of pallets, so will probably just nail them together as a rough and ready compost bin and leave them. This will be our second compost bin, and we are even thinking that we may need a third. That way we can get a good rotation going. A good local site to visit about composting is Compost Works. They have a nice leaflet you can download on composting tips