Heidi Bedell
Malahide Tidy Towns

Mould is not something people commonly aspire to but when you’ve decided to become more ‘environmentally friendly’, a lot of preconceptions get challenged. At a time when Heidi Klune can thrill the world dressed as an earthworm and the Baron of Dunsany is applauded for letting his extensive grounds go completely wild, it’s a small thing to start to recognise ‘mould’ as one of the big players that run the world, essential to our lives.Malahide Tidy Towns began collecting leaves for leaf mould in 2019 and I thought I’d share our learnings over the last 3 years. Contained in wire mesh bundles at St. Sylvestors Church and beside the Tennis Courts, the first year we just left them there. This was not based on ‘reliable scientific research’ but more that we hadn’t really got a plan when we set them up. In 2020 we simply added to the, now reduced, pile and it wasn’t until Autumn 2021 that we got organised enough to dig out the piles to explore the results.Thankfully we had lots of help from volunteers including some students from Scoil Íosa. (See photo 1). Of note was the large number of earthworms (Lumbricus terristris).These were larger and healthier than I’ve seen in normal soil and there was a large number of worm eggs too. The compost was spread on flower beds around the village – mostly the bed on Railway avenue, which some might have noticed was looking particularly good this year!Recently we dug out the compost from 2021.Volunteers have been collecting up leaves over the last couple of weeks but our big push on leaves was Saturday 12th November. We got 4 bags of compost from 2021, which some might feel is a poor return for all the effort involved but they’d be very much mistaken. Our 4 bags of leaf compost are 10 times more valuable than compost imported from outside the area as they’re full of the microorganisms present in the local soil. If you want to do something good for the earth, a leaf compost pile is a good way to start!