Leucaena (Petai Belalang), a player in garden sustainability.

A young lady Nor Hidayah came to the office last week for her doctoral research. I was chosen as her expert panel for professional inputs, which I gladly accepted, to ease out her quest for knowledge. The central issue is sustainability.  While going through the discussion, I pointed out FOREST as the best example of sustainability, the fact that forest exist within a system that is self propelled.  We may emulate contributing factors in forest sustainability into other systems.

This particular post is about Leucaena, which many would happily regard as a nuisance, or invasive.  Folks around here call it as petai belalang.  I on the hand place Leucaena as a treasure. Leucana has small leaves which would fall off from time to time. So small the leaves, that they blend well with grass underneath and decay in no time, adding organic matter to the soil. Some snails may venture out at night munching leaves on the ground, and probably leave poos behind , again as first class  organic fertiliser in ready form.  And that is a recipe for sustainability.

Pic 1: Leucaena alongside Moringa, both with fine leaves
behaving like deciduous trees,
dropping leaves regularly as agent of organic matter

Pic 2: These leucaena had been pruned twice already.
In the wild, Leucaena will be very bushy.

________bangchik and kakdah________