Piles of leaves under bare trees are becoming a very common sight in our cities at this time of year. Large black plastic bags filled with with leaves tend to follow this trend. As Spring approaches in a few short months, some of these same people will be running out to garden stores to buy mulch and new garden soil. If we all take a little time now to prep for Spring, we can save ourselves some time and money down the road. Use the leaves!
The street tree outside our house is a brilliant red maple that decided a week ago to drop all of its leaves. I spent one dry evening outside raking and running the wheelbarrow around. By the end of the night, I had about eight wheelbarrow loads of fluffy, crunchy, organic material to add to my raised vegetable beds.
Why use leaves on your garden beds? The leaves will break down over the winter months adding mulch material back into your soil. What is so great about mulch? Mulch does the following:
- Prevents soil compaction which allows room and oxygen for microorganisms to thrive
- Helps retain more water in your soil, so you can water less often
- Also reduces how much water evaporates from the soil surface, since it can be stored below
- Your plants have a blanket to keep them warm in the cold months
- Your plants have some buffer from the hot summer months, keeping them a little cooler
- Worms come up through the soil to eat the composting leaves. They leave their castings behind which acts as a nice manure-nitrogen boost
The list goes on and on, but now is the time to take these little steps for better soil next Spring. Better soil means better crops! I don’t even till the decomposted leaves under in the Spring, but rather plant right on top of them. AND we don’t need to waste a huge plastic bag and gas hauling away something entirely useful in the flower and vegetable beds.
I would like to do this but have been told that the poplar trees leaves (what the majority of trees we have in the hood are, they drop asbestos seed balls) won’t bread down for years. We’ve thought about mowing them to get them started. Any thoughts?
I’d also like to add for those who DO want to get rid of their leaves – use the paper yard waste bags instead of plastic. There is no reason to use plastic bags.
Remember that this is just about all carbon. Blast it with some chicken manure in January.
You can run a lawn mower over the leaves to speed breakdown. I didn’t last year and still have some oak leaves that are in tact. BUT this is still a great idea. We also use the fallen leaves to cover the paths in our garden. They work great for this!
Good feedback guys! For tough leaves like poplar and oaks, mowing them is not a bad idea or just plan to have them in your beds for a longer time – they act as mulch either way.
A word of warning that not ALL leaves are great for your beds. Maples, ash, fruit trees, etc are all great. There are some studies that show eucalyptus leaves, for example, can be acidic – although there are conflicting reports on this. I would say most garden and common trees would be a safe bet for mulch material.
agree with harper that if you want compost instead of mulch, then make a heap. we end up using about a third of our leaves in the compost heap, a third just gets raked into the beds near the house as mulch, and the rest goes into the yard debris can. the green cans in PDX hold a lot of leaves.