Glad you brought this up, because I would like to know what the difference is between leaf mold and compost.
THanks

Leaf mold is a form of compost produced by the fungal breakdown of shrub and tree leaves, which are generally too dry, acidic, or low in nitrogen for bacterial decomposition.

The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide has an article on p. 64 for November called Leaf Mold: Worth the Wait. The article says that before peat based soil less potting soils there was leaf mold available to purchase.

Leaf only compost piles can take up to 2 years to decompose into humus suitable for potting soil.

(my note: Unshredded leaves do take 2 years, but shredded leaves are ready as mulch in spring, for pots in early summer, & for seed starting in the fall. I like to bag them & poke a few moisture holes or reuse bags from other garden projects. Just be sure to remember where you've stowed away the bags and use thicker bags if you're moving them at all. We always seem to need to move them if they're around that long. Seems like you can never have too much of it!)

LF is slow to decompose because high carbon to low nitrogen ratio. Pure leaf mold has a coarse, crumb like structure that is excellent addition to potting soils because it increases air content. Also, not high nitrogen so doesn't promote leggy seedlings that encourage insect damage & diseases.

Tree leaves are the best concentrators of:
calcium
magnesium
& trace minerals.

Best leaves are: oak, beech, maple, ash & alder.
Do not use walnut family & horse chestnut trees because of concentrated chemicals in leaves that inhibit germination & growth of many plants.

Beneficial to shade or cover LM pile during summer to keep it from drying out. Wire cylinder out of hog wire works as a bin.

good article here for how to make & use it

Here is a link that might be useful: making leaf mold

In my experience, the leaves need to be kept wet. I live in a dry environment and my 'leaf mold', made of whole oak leaves, was mostly a confined leaf pile that never decomposed. After more than 5 years, there is very little to show in the way of leaf mold from that pile of leaves.

On the other hand, I shredded a very large pile of leaves and left them as a very deep mulch. They heated up right away, just like you would expect compost to heat up; about 135 degrees. Two years later, they became something that looks like compost, but a very, very finely textured compost. A finer grained material than coffee grounds.

I truly expect that it is not actually ready to use as a soil amendment, so it is getting mixed back into a compost bin with some 'greens' (primarily grass clippings) to make compost for next year.

Leaf mold is what is left of a pile of leaves after the bacterial digests them. Only leaves are used here.
Compost is a mix of materials, not just one type such as leaves although compost could be mostly leaves.
If you add a source of Nitrogen to your pile of leaves it then becomes a compost pile, since something other then leaves has been introduced.
There is no real need to turn your pile, hpwever, turning can aid the process and you would have leaf mold, or compost, sooner then if you did not turn the pile.

idaho, I think your oak leaves were waxy enough that between that and the dry climate, they didn't break down very fast. I'm always amazed at how slowly my folks' compost breaks down in NM, even with kitchen scraps added. I don't water my leaf bins, but we get 30" of rain here in MO. At least, in a normal year. :-p

I use oak, maple, and sweet gum leaves. Oak leaves are a brown, but freshly fallen maple and sweet gum leaves pretty much self-compost with temps up to 140F. As to whether this would be considered leaf mold, I have more important things to worry about.

Hi Crusadr.

My sister lives in Connecticut. The area is a 'temperate rain forest'. Seriously. Averaging 50 inches of rain yearly. Heavily forested with oak trees. When I was helping build her garden, we took a pickup truck to a local country club. They had a massive leaf pile, about an acre, piled high with leaves swept off of the golf course. We pulled into the middle area and loaded the pickup truck with whole decomposing oak leaves, steamy hot, fragrant.

Keep 'em damp and they'll decompose just fine. And if you shred them, they'll break down even faster.