The leaves are similar to sugar maple leaves.. except red.
I put down wood chips in the mulch ring around my fruit trees… And later on grass clippings, and later on fall leaves.
Some of the fall leaves I collect and use are from the edges of my field… they are mixed hardwood leaves and they fall out into my field…. I mow a combination of grass and leaves and bag those.. put them in a big pipe in the edge of my woods and use that for mulch around fruit trees, blueberries, blackberries, food forest beds, etc.
It all just turns to dark rich compost.
I have walking onions, chives, bocking 14 comfey growing in the mulch rings under my fruit trees… I chop and drop the comfery… did that for a couple hours yesterday.
The city composts collected leaves in the fall into soil that people can take (city residents–they got strict many years ago). They would turn the huge piles with front end loaders or whatever. I want to say they would add sand to the mix and not sure what else. It always had a really nice almost chewing tobacco smell to it. I can remember using it for potted plants and they always did well//although over the course of the summer it would shrink/compact/breakdown.
What do you mean by spongy? I’ve always seen that as the first step of composted leaves where they sort of feel like a sponge. The second phase is humus. I take a lot of fall leaves from neighbors, mostly oak and maple, I usually see that spongy phase 10-18 months after collection.
Edit: A photo of spongy phase. These leaves were pre-shredded so it only took 6 months.
Therefore spongy. The fungus holds the rotting leaves together in a water impervious matt on the forest floor, thereby stopping seeds of potential competition from sprouting, I figure. Once it is somewhat broken up it decomposes quickly, but maybe not so fast in its natural habitat… it’s really a kind of fungal life form. .
Chat tells me that it can become water impervious during the summer but winter will usually turn it into a wet matt. As long as it doesn’t dry out with a short stretch of drought I guess it doesn’t become impervious to water… a bit like peat moss.
