Falling leaves

The leaves are falling fast now from the big sycamore tree at the top of the allotment and every time we go there are even more.  It's time to start sweeping them up to put in the leaf bin. It's an ongoing job at the moment as soon as we  have swept up one lot of leaves there is another layer of them covering the beds and paths. But they are too good not to save, they make such wonderful compost.

Richard spent a few days recently weeding the leaf composting  area which hasn't been emptied in the two years we have had the allotment. The weeds were mainly bindweed coming from the allotment next door, which is a sadly neglected plot and I get very cross about all the weeds which come through onto our plot.  He weeded the leaf mould,cleared as many weeds as he could which were poking through the fence from the next door plot and then  fixed an old door against the fence to try to suppress them. All these bits of wood which we save come in useful eventually!

We have recently been given two of the plastic type of compost bins. At the time I was a bit doubtful that they would be of any use and even wondered where to keep them as we have a good sized composting area already on the plot. But when you have an allotment you don't like to refuse anything which is free and could be of some use. I am pleased to say that we have now found a use for them as storage bins for the rotted down leaf mould. The leaf mould has turned into a  lovely, crumbly compost and is ready to put on the beds as a mulch over the winter.  Leaf mould is wonderful stuff and so easy to make. Now that the rotted down stuff is out of the bin we can now start collecting leaves again to make a new leaf pile.