Fall Leaves: Bag the Bagging
Right now, outside your door, there is a huge bonanza of nutrients for your garden and plants. Every year this is free and readily available . We are talking about leaves. Instead of raking, blowing, bagging and sending leaves to the landfill, they can be used the enrich the plants and soil. Since fall leaves contain a lot of carbon and other important micro nutrients they make great mulch, compost, and even lawn fertilizer.
The best thing you can do is just leave them be if you can! However, if you do have to remove leaves from walkways and other spaces you still can use the nutrition back into your garden.
Here are some of the ways to use leaves.
Compost
Autumn leaves, especially those that have been shredded by a lawnmower, are the perfect addition to the compost pile. Leaves are a great source of "brown," high-carbon material for the compost. Simply alternate layers of shredded leaves with the regular green materials you'd add to your compost pile, such as vegetable and fruit scraps, weeds, grass clippings, and plants that you pull out in your fall garden cleanup, and let it sit over the winter. Aerate or turn the pile when you think of it, and by planting time you'll have finished compost.
You can also just rake the leaves onto your planting beds. They will partially decompose over the winter and help insulate the soil, retain moisture and feed the microorganisms that will in turn help feed plants in the growing season.
Make Leaf Mold
Leaf mold is a wonderful soil amendment that is made from nothing more than fall leaves. If you pile the leaves up or put in a bin, it will gradually decompose. It can take a year or more, but can happen faster if the leaves are shredded and if you add some soil or compost to the pile. Another simple way to make leaf mold is to put the leaves in a plastic bag, puncture the bag to make holes on all sides and wet the leaves. Then tie the bag up and leave it. Check the moisture level every month or so; the leaves need to be damp to decompose. And roll or turn the bag over periodically. If the leaves have been shredded before adding them to the bag, you could have leaf mold in as little as 6 months.
When it's finished you have the perfect amendment for vegetable and flower gardens, and it can also be used as potting soil.
Create Mulch
After you shred the leaves, they can be used as an organic mulch in flower beds and vegetable gardens, around trees and shrubs, and in containers. Simply apply a 2- to 3-inch layer of shredded leaves to the beds, keeping the mulch from directly touching the stems and trunks of the plants. The mulch retains moisture in the soil, stays cool, and limits weed seed germination. As a bonus, the leaves add nutrients to the soil as they break down, and the worms and soil microorganisms work on them as well, resulting in lighter, fluffier soil over time.
Hoard Leaves
You may think that once all the leaf cleanup is finished, you'll never want to see another leaf again. But when spring rolls around, and you're out there weeding and deadheading and pruning again, you'll be adding all of those "greens" to the compost pile. At the same time, brown compost materials can be hard to come by in spring and summer. If you've thought ahead and hoarded a garbage bag or two in your garage over the winter, you won't have any problem making perfect compost in spring. It's much easier to dump a bag of leaves on the compost pile than to stand there shredding newspaper in an attempt to dry out soggy compost.
Mow
Simply mowing the leaves is the easiest solution, as it involves no raking whatsoever. There really is no scientific reason to rake all the leaves off the lawn. If you run over them with a mower, they'll break down over the winter, providing your soil with nutrients and shading the soil, which results in fewer lawn weeds to worry about next year. If you do this once a week until the leaves have finished falling, you won't have to rake a single leaf, and your lawn will look better for it next spring and summer.
Keep in mind that this requires a mulching lawnmower, which is designed to recirculate the grass clippings so they are cut into small pieces and can be left on the lawn rather than collected and bagged. The same design works with leaves. Most lawnmowers these days have mulching capability, and older mowers can be converted to mulchers by installing a mulching blade.
So, do the right thing, for your yard and garden, for the soil and for the environment. Leaves are free and one of the best fertilizers and soil amendments available.