Autumn’s bounty of fallen leaves is not often an issue for lawns and gardens—mulching the bottom with them helps to feed the soil for a more healthy yard.
If you happen to grew up in a neighborhood with plenty of bushes, chances are high you needed to put in loads of hours every fall raking the leaves, bagging them up, after which sending them off someplace, most definitely to the landfill. And also you have been in all probability informed that this was so the yard would look tidier and the leaves would not kill the grass. This delusion has in all probability bought extra rakes and baggage than the rest. And whereas raking could have enriched the pockets of neighborhood youngsters, the follow removes vital soil vitamins, which owners then often repurchase in a bag or jug of fertilizer from the native backyard heart.
As a result of we’re older and hopefully wiser now, eradicating leaves—an vital annual enter to our native soil biology—and sending them elsewhere should not make as a lot sense because it may need earlier than we knew higher. Whereas it is at the least partially true that extreme quantities of fallen leaves left in thick piles all winter can smother a garden, leaving the leaves on the bottom as mulch will be an efficient soil-building methodology to help a wholesome yard.
Advantages of Fallen Leaves
Treehugger / Kaitlyn Kilpatrick
Fallen leaves—as a further bodily layer of natural supplies above floor—present meals, shelter, and nesting or bedding supplies to wildlife, in addition to overwintering safety for bugs, all contributing to a wholesome yard. The soil beneath the leaves additionally advantages from this autumnal present, because the leaves are basically composted over time into vitamins that feed the grass crop the next 12 months. However, leaves additionally feed microbes within the soil, that are a very powerful crop you possibly can develop, contemplating that every one plants in your yard depends upon wholesome soil biology.
In keeping with Nationwide Wildlife Federation Naturalist David Mizejewski, “Fallen leaves provide a double profit. Leaves kind a pure mulch that helps suppress weeds and on the similar time fertilizes the soil because it breaks down. Why spend cash on mulch and fertilizer when you may make your personal?”
Maximizing the Advantages
Treehugger / Kaitlyn Kilpatrick
Nonetheless, leaving the leaves to put the place they fall within the autumn is not the simplest method of maximizing their profit, as generally they will pile up in areas the place they might successfully smother a piece of the yard. However, there are a number of methods to strategy your leaf harvest, relying in your scenario.
As one plant and soil specialist, Dr. Thomas Nikoai of Michigan State College, put it, leaving the leaves on the garden is ” … not solely not an issue, it is superior.” In keeping with an interview at Christian Science Monitor, Dr. Nikolai says that mowing over the fallen leaves to show them into smaller items will improve the garden’s fertility, not kill it. And, whereas it is often finest to make use of a mulching mower or mulching attachment to transform the bigger leaves into smaller-sized particles, nearly any mower can do the job; it is merely a matter of mowing over the leaf-filled yard just a few instances in the course of the season.
Nonetheless, in the event you’re cultivating a tidier look to your garden and don’t desire these pesky dried leaves getting in the best way, you possibly can rake them into backyard beds, flower beds, or mulch round bushes, both as-is or through the use of a bagger in your mower to gather them. Overlaying backyard beds with a thick mulch within the fall will be an efficient and easy technique to construct soil fertility and hold your yard tidier.
However, far be it from me to encourage you to make use of garden tools in a method that it is not supposed. I’ve heard, nonetheless, you could put leaves into a big trash can after which use your weed-eater within the can to slash the leaves into tiny bits to be used as mulch.
Leaves generally is a nice additive to a house compost pile, and by protecting a leaf pile subsequent to your compost, you should use leaves to cowl layers of kitchen meals waste all through the winter. You too can use fallen leaves to reclaim marginal sections of a yard by constructing an enormous leaf pile there and letting it sit all winter. By spring, the decrease a part of the leaf pile may have remodeled into wealthy soil, whereas the center and high layers can be good for mulch or a soil modification for spring backyard beds.
Leaf Drop-Offs
Treehugger / Kaitlyn Kilpatrick
If none of those makes use of for fallen leaves work in your scenario, you possibly can look into native choices for leaf drop-offs—locations that gather yard waste at a central location and switch it into compost and mulch. Though this feature requires raking and bagging, it retains a possible pure useful resource out of the waste stream.
And in the event you’re like me—at all times searching for sources of free natural matter to make use of as compost, mulch, and soil-building supplies—you may wish to put your title on the market as a potential drop-off location for neighborhood leaves. You too can contact the coordinators of the native leaf drop-off and ask about getting baggage of leaves totally free from the occasion (I’ve achieved this earlier than and it is an efficient and easy technique to get free substances for enriching your soil).