Not enough air in a plastic bin, Gattina - leaf mould takes at least a year, so you do need patience. I put my leaves into black sacks and punch holes in them. I used the leaf mould from two years ago when I created the new bed under the apple tree, and it was perfect.

I know what you mean about flimsy bags - some of mine had started to disintegrate and I had to shovel the leaf mould into the barrow. It's worth persevering!

it also depends on which leaves. Beech and oak take 3yrs or so whilst ash etc 18months.
shovel them into new bags but dont overfill them as they do need air to circulate to help in the rotting process.

You are also being impatient, Gattina. I am just in the process of emptying leaf mould bags filled in autumn 2011. I prefer hessian coal sacks rather plastic bags and also use bulk bags from the builders merchants. Both are bio-degradable so only last a few years outdoors.

It sounds as if they could have been too wet. I never used to wet the leaves when I made it - just put them in the bags as they were. In the autumn they are usually damp anyway.
I used to leave the bags about 2 years, sometimes 3 yrs.
I loved using leaf mould but I don't make it now - no trees overhanging this garden.
I use plastic dustbins to make compost. I've punched lots of holes in them, but I'm not sure how leaf mould would turn out in them.

I use mesh bags and black plastic ones if I run out.With plastic ones I never tie the top only fold it over and put lot of holes in them with a garden fork. I leave them in the shade under trees or big shrubs for up to a year.
Having made it for over 30 years I found the colder it is in winter the quicker it works as it needs cold unlike compost which needs heat.
The other things I found, was not to collect the leaves very wet so I make sure they are only damp with some dry ones to soak up excess water. The reason mine seems to rot down quicker and must not be too wet, is because I use a leaf hoover which chops it very fine - some use a mower to do this.
I also find if I only fill the plastic bags 1/2 full they get colder and seem to decompose quicker and dont break when lifting

@ Hywel. Your dustbin idea works for leaf mould as long as you just put the leaves in loosely or, like compost, turn it occasionally.

Thank you Sarraceniac. That's good to know :o)

Hywel, I'm sure one of your neighbours would be delighted to let you have some of their leaves in the autumn. We don't have a single tree in ours (its very small) so I don't have the bother of sweeping them up. We did have a huge garden a few years ago with 33 large trees and it and it took days to clear them.

The trouble is my neighbours have empty gardens. There isn't one that is the slightest bit interested. They just have empty boring lawns and nothing else (one does grow a few vegetables in a little patch, but that's all)
I'll have to collect leaves from the lane at the back :o)

Most of our leaves are collected, by me, from the local car park! My bit of 'civic duty' with a bonus.

It's very good of you to help the local council Bulbaholic ;o)

Thank you so much for your comments, everyone. I think a bit of drying out and rebagging and a whole lot of patience is required on my part.

I have eight oak trees and a ring of 'fence' trees (hazel and a few beech) in my 'garden' (approx. 1 acre in total?) so plenty of leaves... if comparatively little actual growing space for flowers/veg! - so I need to cherish the latter with compost etc. ...

I usually leave nature to do its own thing re the leaves since I don't think very tidy gardens in the middle of the countryside are feasible (or even perhaps desirable!) unless you have the energy and resources to keep them pristine... However if leaves are worth collecting for leaf-mould I could do it (good for my waistline and no doubt, for my 'dicky' heart!) However, I fear I'm ignorant: why does one need them? I thought they were quite poor in nutrients?

And where does one put the ugly black bin bags over several years? Don't they clutter up your gardens? (I'm already agonising whether to buy a bin to make nettle tea tonic and where to site it to avoid smells!)

Any advice welcome!

Now listen Monjardinira, I shall say this only once. Leaf mould doesn't add very much in the way of nutrition to the garden but it does add, 'ow do you say it, a soil amendment. Over the years, as it rots in it will add a certain amount of vitamins and minerals, but not as much as a good compost. But it does other things. It improves drainage it improves the texture, particularly in the two extremes, clayey soil and sandy soil. In the case of a sandy soil it helps retain moisture and in the case of a clayey soil helps to break it down for drainage. I suppose I'd better come out of retirement for a minute and say it is really like fibre in the human diet. It doesn't really add anything in nutrition but (I'm going to talk dirty so stop reading now if you can't take the heat) if you are constipated it helps you go and if you are too loose it firms you up. It is the Fybagel (Ispaghula husk) of the plant world.

That will be 30 euros please for the medical consultation. ;o)

P.S. Dicky tickers are more expensive.

Oh Sarra, I LOVE your analogy! How delightfully and succinctly and graphically put. (I am quite pleasantly surprised to find you accept Euros, by the way)

According to the RHS there are 2 types of leafmould - poor quality leafmould, that is less than two years old which can be used as mulch, soil improver, autumn top-dressing for lawns, or winter covering for bare soil, which is how I use mine.
Whereas a good quality, well-rotted leafmould (more than two years old) can be used as seed-sowing compost, or mixed equally with sharp sand, garden compost and good quality soil for use as potting compost.

I may be a bit higerant.......but I would have thought that the leaves from forest trees form part of the recyled nutrients and soil improvers that temperate forest trees need to keep going and become mighty giants. So they must have 'goodness' in them. Mostly our leaves stay in the shrub border. Some go into open weave hessian sacks, kept dry, and used as protectors for pots under a canopy. Then they get salted away into the compost heap thinly layered with other compostable stuff. There are lots of ways of using leaves, other than bagging and sending to landfill. Congrats to Bulbaholic for his collection of leaves in the carpark.

I use leafmould from about 18months old. Until recently it was only used as a peat alternative in potting compost but as I am now building up a stock of it I am also using it as a garden mulch. One advantage of leaf mould is that it does not have as many weed seeds in it as garden compost (I am refering to the compost that I make).

Hi folks thanks all of you for the advice (my computer has been dicey so i did not get this link till today). Sarra can I defer payment on your medical advice? my Brit pension groans at the seams... Everyone else, I still want to know: if my mini-forest drops leaves and they blow about on my garden, do i just leave (!) them and hope, or should I be gathering them?

Depends how lazy you are Ira, or how tidy you want your garden. If like me you are a bone idle bungle gardener then you can just let nature do its thing. However, even I get an occasional burst of energy and, realise that this system (or lack of system) is a tiny bit hit and miss. That, plus a friend who keeps telling me that my garden looks like a jungle, (I keep telling her it is supposed to) forces me to pick up the leaves and bag them up in the true spirit of a formal Italian garden, which is not my favourite.

My computer is very dicey too but behaving itself at the moment Monjardi.....Does depend what sort of garden you have. Very Formal.....clear up every last leaf. Not so formal or too large.....clear up over time. Decant under shrubs. Store in some way....try not to send to landfill or whatever. The worms will do a lot for you too. If you run a rough old garden....leaves left where they are natures bounty, can surely do no harm. If it rains a lot, as it has done here, they will go pretty quickly. My cyclamen coum love a covering of leaves. Now they are flowering the leaves have just vanished.

leaf mould and why I keep asking: I have a "rough old garden", or rather, a piece of a natural hillside complete with trees (about an acre) and old houses/stone buildings surrounding it, which might never originally have been intended as 'garden'. I can't find out much about its history except that the previous owner before me, a lady, who with husband owned the place for 17 years, and who was a keen gardener (but only a summer visitor, this happens often in France where people are able to keep their parents' houses, but alas not to find rural work nearby so that they can live here) carved out many small beds but then they were neglected for some years, when her husband developed terminal cancer.

I re-established a small potager and planted a few fruit trees (in memory of my french-influenced childhood) when I first came, and planned much more, but then inconsiderately my ailing body objected (heart, 2 x strokes) so work was put on hold and small resources diverted.

Nevertheless I still want to do the best I can by continuing this patch and for it to be both pretty and useful (latter essential, since as always monetary funds are small).

Hence my perpetual quest for advice and my pestilential questions, in such a rural landscape black plastic bags and bright dustbins and indeed bright green water butts jar slightly? (or am I being too "precious"?) Nevertheless in these resource-conscious days, wouldn't it be nice if someone could market a water-butt (or a range thereof) that actually LOOKED nice and didn't need a second mortgage?

I know Bob Flowerdew would disagree with me, but me, I congratulate myself if it's useful, but I'd prefer it if I also like to look at it...! I've just re-potted a nascent pelargonium in an old clay pot rather than the available (purple or yellow!) plastic alternative, because if it survives I want to site it on a set of old stone steps - so I'm afraid I'm unrepentant...

But back to leaf-mould.. Didn't someone tell me you could corral leaf-mould in a chicken-wire enclosure with four sticks supporting? Or is that hopelessly 1970s of me? (I have plenty of chicken wire in the barn, and more than one or two sticks potentially available...!)

Thanks for everyone's help and comments, these have done so much to cheer this interval between "pretty snow" and "invading hordes of pests" in the garden!

If you are wanting the 'rustic' look, Monjardinlra, you could build wooden bins. Four fence posts with wooden rails nailed between them. I would actually build a row of three bins, each able to hold one years worth of leaves. The wood doean not need to be new, old, rough cut boards are ideal and the front of the bins can be left open. You could easily hide these within an acre plot.
If there is a sawmill near you ask if they have, what we call, 'backs'. These are the outside sections of the log when it has been sawn to a into square section. They are usually sold as firewood.

Chicken wire enclosures are the gardeners' friend. C.w. allows the (necessary) air to get at the leaf mould or compost and the worms and insects to get in and out. Just make sure it is supported securely enough not to collapse when full.

Gardening is great for blood pressure, the root cause of strokes as long as you just do the relaxing, light exercise, pottering and convince a local healthy person to do the heavy digging and moving. You usually have to find some cash to encourage them which is unfortunate but in this modern age is often necessary and paying a bit certainly beats having a stroke or a heart attack. And often, if you can get somebody who is interested in gardening, and let them do some of their own things, the cost is negligible.

My OH, under strict supervision, is out in the garden as I write, hammering four stout stakes into the ground and I shall then go and attach brown plastic covered netting and put all my nascent leafmould into this container. I have issues with horrid, brightly coloured bins and tubs in the garden, so last year I bought water-based stone paint in a pale terracotta colour, sanded the bins and tubs lightly and then painted them. The algae and moss and general grubbiness has already "aged" them a bit, and if you glanced quickly, you wouldn't know their origins. Certainly worth a try, and anything's better than yellow or purple!

The back part of one of our local parks is au naturel, Monjardinira, with a slope with trees and of oak, beech etc and pathway running through They just have open fronted bays of chicken wire and pile in the leaves, then go to the next bin and so on. The only bother is ......collecting the dam leaves..... for a private person with a heart condition plus other issues, this might be a job too far. Maybe discrete little wire caches dotted about the leafiest bits. Then take it gently over time to move the leaves into them. See if you can email/write to Beth Chattos garden and check out what is done about leaves in her woodland garden, which is superb. She is well into her eighties and has employees to assist her.