By Elizabeth Spence
It’s like the leaves are falling from far away,
as if distant gardens withered in the skies;
the falling leaves are sighing “no.” . . .
Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Elizabeth Spence
The time has come. The leaves are indeed falling from far away. What with the winds we’ve been having.
The leaves are reading our thoughts: “No, we don’t want the summer to be over. We know what’s coming.” Another winter.
But many of us feel we have to get on with it. What do we do with all those fallen leaves unless we just leave them and wait for nature to blow them into piles or into the neighbour’s yard?
In the old days, the air was full of the smell of burning leaves. That was the home-grown way of getting rid of them. Even today, the memory of that aroma of leaves afire brings back pictures and feelings of autumn and the fading of the year. Mark Langille, Tatamagouche Fire Chief, tells us it is still legal to burn leaves.
Nowadays, though, if you want to dispose of them, you are more likely to bag them up in plastic or paper bags, place them at the end of the driveway to be hauled away with the garbage. At least they’re gone. But you don’t really know what happens to them, even though they are sometimes supposed to be turned into municipal compost.
There’s so much more you can do with fallen leaves. They are, after all, nature’s free gift to the gardener. They hold up to as much as 80% of the nutrients the trees have drawn up from the earth over the growing season. When they fall to earth, they gradually decompose and return those nutrients to the soil. Why waste all that goodness?
Leaves make a wonderful compost, leaf mold and mulch, and there is much advice on how to prepare leaves for these applications.
Many say that you should shred them. Use a leaf shredder, go over them several times with a lawn mower of any sort, or put them in a plastic garbage can and attack them with a whipper snipper. If you don’t have any machinery, stuff a garbage bag with very dry leaves, close it and stamp on it. Voila.
On the other hand, there are people now saying that you shouldn’t shred them at all because the use of these machines is detrimental to the environment.
There are even those who suggest you shouldn’t do anything at all to your fallen leaves, since they are the habitat for numerous overwintering insects. You will kill them if you disturb the leaves, we are told.
One of the problems of not shredding them is that some whole leaves, maple for instance, when massed together, do not break down very quickly unless shredded, and they can form impenetrable mats. This reduces oxygen movement into the soil and creates temporary anaerobic conditions during the winter. Doesn’t sound particularly good to me.
As always, there are so many points of view in gardening, that it can become quite mind-bending. So much online advice is obviously just thoughtless repetition of what people have seen elsewhere, and so often there are personal agendas behind what we are told. The best thing to do is probably research things (which is where we come in), consider your circumstances, think about it and then –
So getting on with it: shredded leaves decompose much more readily than whole ones since there is a much larger surface area for microbes to get at and digest.
The first thing you can make with shredded leaves is leaf mold. This is partially decomposed leaves on their own – nothing else.
Fungi are responsible for decomposition here, and they like it cool, so keep them in a shady spot. Make sure to soak everything thoroughly once you have the leaf mold in place and then leave it.
It does take a couple of years for the leaf mold to be ready, so you can tuck it in a corner and see if you remember to go back and actually use it when the time comes.
Shredded leaves are also a great addition to compost. The usual advice is to mix them with kitchen scraps and other green matter like grass clippings to balance the chemistry.
There are special burlap bags available which make composting and developing leaf-mold a bit tidier:
These from Amazon are actually quite small, so you could use a bigger loosely woven burlap bag instead if you have a lot of leaves. Environmentally very friendly. Some use plastic bags with holes punched in them.
You can also use wire or wooden bins, old pallets, wattle fencing, wire mesh or anything you can think of for compost and for leaf mold. You can just put compost in a pile on the ground. Make sure you turn it over about every week so to aerate the pile and ensure roots don’t grow up into it if is near trees.
Both thoroughly decomposed compost and leaf mold are wonderful soil amendments. Just loosely dig them in. It just takes a while.
There is very little to beat shredded leaves as mulch. (See our major article on mulching for more information). They do all sorts of important things:
- build up the soil structure, improve soil quality;
- provide better water retention and percolation;
- reduce the need for fertilizer;
- reduce leaching of any fertilizer that is used;
- keep weeds at bay,
- provide a home for overwintering insects, and
- when decomposed, they can suppress disease.
And – making mulch is much easier and quicker than messing about making compost and leaf mold. Just shred the leaves and put them on the garden around shrubs and plants. To make it even easier: blow them directly on the beds as you are shredding them.
Shredded leaves are less likely to blow away than whole ones, but if there is a chance they will start blowing away, you can hose them down or put a heavier mulch such as wood chips on top or cover everything with evergreen boughs.
If you want to use shredded leaves as mulch on your lawn, it’s important to have a very thin layer – you must be able to see the grass. If you put too thick a layer on, the grass will die.
Jennifer has another use of fallen leaves and that is to use them as winter protection around sensitive shrubs and roses.
When the plant is dormant, pile shredded leaves 8-24″ high over the base of the plant. Or you can put a cage of some sort around the plant and fill with leaves.
If you are planning new beds for next year, piling leaves on the ground where you want the beds to be is a great way of starting them off. This applies to raised beds as well. The leaves will kill anything growing, like grass, and start making wonderful soil for your new venture.
You can further amend the soil in the spring if you wish, but just doing this now is easier. Just pile the leaves on – that’s it – and if they are likely to blow away, cover them with evergreen branches. Why not let nature do the work?
So, there we have various ways of re-purposing leaves in our gardens. Not only do they reduce the need for buying fertilizer and other soil amendments, but the best thing of all is that they’re FREE!! What more could you ask?
If you don’t have the time, inclination or space to use your fallen leaves in the garden, why not bag them and give them away instead of putting them in the garbage? I’m sure many a gardener around here would be most grateful. I would!! (Most of you know where I live!)
Sharing our leaves keeps more material out of landfills, and is another way of keeping things local. By doing so we are definitely strengthening the bonds of our gardening community! Thank you, everyone!
Copyright©2024 Elizabeth Spence
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