leaf litter

[bruce]

I use mostly oak leaves (heated in a microwave oven) routinely. I have found using maple leaves they mat down too quickly and decompose the same and "soft" uncured leaves from the magnolia get "mushy" and smelly for me.
I believe were trying to get a "kinda" compost working it seems for vivarium floors. A forest floor has a "lightness" to it. I have used orchid bark minus the perlite in a pinch. I know when a mix works when springtails heavily populate the mix.
Maple leaves and uncured magnolia tend to mat down, not allowing the substrate to "breath".
The trick as mentioned is to find the mix that is light enough to provide frog coverage and "wet" enough to encourage "food" to grow.

[Matt Mirabello]

Originally Posted by divingne1

My question is, they are still green on one side (even after boiling) but can I still use them as leave litter?

Originally Posted by markbudde

SO right now I'm waiting for the alder leaves to come out so I can go harvest a bunch.

In my experience I have only used leaves that were brown and fell off of the tree in the Autumn after completing all the physiological changes associated with leaf senescence. Leaves that fall off the tree green prematurely decay much faster than leaves that fall "naturally."

As was mentioned earlier leaves decay at different rates. this has to do with their nutrient content, ease of physical break down, and presence of inhibitory chemicals. Green leaves have chemicals that are meant to prevent herbivory by canopy insects versus ones that prevent decay after the leaf falls. Plants try to take out as many nutrients as possible from a leaf before it drops it, storing them in the bud for new leaf growth in the spring.

The forest floor does get the occasional green leaf, but they do not last long and int he fall the forest floor is dominated by dry brown leaves. The layer of leaf litter that develops is driven by autumn leaves, not green leaves.

the occasional green leaf in the terrarium will be fine but to get a nicely functioning leaf litter layer "naturally" dropped leaves are the closest to what actually happens in a forest.

The nutrients in the leaves are important, but equally important is the refugia that the leaves provide for soil arthropods. If the leaves decay to fast you risk having fewer refugia and the arthropod population crashing. If the leaves decay to slow the arthropods may not have enough food/nutrients available to build up their populations. However I have never heard of this happening with the leaves people are using.