Posted on 10/15/2022 5:49:00 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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5 Ways to Use Autumn Leaves in the Garden (Practical Applications)
There’s something that doesn’t feel right about leaves naturally falling from trees only to be stuffed into plastic garbage bags and dumped by the millions into landfills. Biodegradable paper leaf bags offer a partial solution. But wouldn’t it be better to simply use those leaves to enhance your garden instead of treating them as trash? Leaves contain a lot of carbon that when broken down makes great mulch, compost, and even lawn fertilizer.
The key to the successful use of leaves in your landscape is to shred them first, which you can do with a mulching lawnmower or a leaf mulcher. If you don’t shred them, they won’t completely break down over the winter, and you’ll have to rake them up in the spring. It’s also not healthy for lawns to be covered with a mat of whole leaves.
Here are five ways to use shredded leaves around your landscape.
Create Compost
Leaves are a great source of brown, high-carbon material for the compost pile. Simply alternate layers of shredded leaves with the regular green materials you 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. Let all of that sit over the winter. Aerate or turn the pile as needed, and by planting time in the spring, you’ll have finished compost.
Make Leaf Mold
Leaf mold is a wonderful soil amendment that is made from nothing more than fall leaves with a layer of garden soil or finished compost. Layer the shredded leaves and compost and let the pile sit for about a year. And when it’s finished, you have the perfect amendment for vegetable and flower gardens as well as a fantastic addition to potting soil.
Use as Free 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, helps to maintain a consistent soil temperature, and limits weed seed germination. As a bonus, the leaves add nutrients to the soil as they break down.
Hoard for Springtime
Once all the leaf cleanup is finished in the fall, you might not want to see another leaf again. But when spring rolls around and you’re in the garden pruning and weeding again, you’ll have an excess of greens for the compost pile but not enough dry material, such as fall leaves. However, if you’ve thought ahead and hoarded a garbage bag or two of shredded dry leaves over the winter, you won’t have any problem making perfect compost in the spring. The dry leaves will help to prevent your compost from becoming a soggy mess.
Supplement Lawns
There is no reason to rake all the leaves off your lawn if you have a mulching lawn mower. If you run over them with a mower to shred them into small pieces, they’ll break down over the winter, providing your soil with nutrients and suppressing weeds. If you do this once a week until the leaves have finished falling, you likely won’t have to rake a single leaf, and your lawn will look better for it next spring and summer. However, keep in mind this requires a mulching lawnmower, which cuts grass clippings into small enough pieces that can be left on the lawn rather than being collected and bagged. The same theory works with leaves. Most modern lawnmowers have the mulching capability, and older mowers can be converted to mulchers by installing a mulching blade.
https://www.thespruce.com/using-autumn-leaves-in-the-garden-2539787
12 Ways to Use Fall Leaves (Fun Stuff!)
Some things to do with fall leaves were recommended in this article about decorating your home for fall. Here are 12 more things to do with fall leaves that you may not have considered.
Make “bouquets” with them. If you find some leaves still attached to a small piece of tree branch, you can stick it into a mason jar for a long-lasting centerpiece.
Use them as mulch. While you CAN use them whole, if you shred the leaves, you create a nice protective mulch to put around the base of perennial plants to feed and protect them over the winter. If you don’t have a leaf shredder, you can run over a pile a few times with a lawnmower.
Make leaf mold for your garden. These composted leaves are actually a great soil amendment. Here are specific instructions on how to make a leaf mold compost.
Make an autumn leaf garland. Go for a nature walk and pick up the prettiest and most colorful fall leaves. When you get home, use yard, twine, or some other kind of cord to make a pretty garland. Simply tie the leaves to the cordage by the stem, then hang these over doorways, windows, banisters, and mantels.
Leave them in the yard. Leave them (get it) in the yard so that they can feed your lawn all winter long underneath the snow. Go over them with a lawnmower to break them down.
Use them in your root cellar. If you have a root cellar or basement, dry leaves can be used instead of newspaper for layering the vegetables you are keeping fresh down there. (Make sure your leaves are dry before using them for this purpose.
Insulate baby trees. If you are growing some new fruit trees or other perennial plants, encircle them with chicken wire or another malleable wire fencing. Then stuff leaves down into them to protect your plants from the harsh winter.
Make leaf art. Use those floating frames with glass on both sides and choose the most beautiful leaves you discover to turn them into art.
Cover your garden with them. When you rake up your leaves, put them in your garden. You can lay plastic tarps over them to help them break down over the winter and nourish your soil.
Add them to your compost pile. Put your leaves into your compost pile and stir them in for added nutrients.
Make falling leaf window décor. Collect a whole bunch of pretty leaves. Get long pieces of transparent fishing line and tie leaves randomly to the line. Hang each line from your curtain rod. As people move through the room or a breeze passes through, the strands will move and give the impression of falling leaves.
Make a pile for jumping in. Duh. This probably should have been first! Is there any better fall activity than jumping into a huge pile of freshly raked leaves? Only laying in the pile or burying each other in it. It’s a great way to spend some time playing outdoors whether you’re old or young.
https://thefrugalite.com/ways-to-use-fall-leaves/
We’ve started our raking leaves routine that will now continue through till December when we finally give up until Spring returns. We rake not just the leaves from our trees, but also all that blow from our neighbors’ trees that they don’t rake, which blow our way. The first week or two or three, I can deal with it, but by the fourth week, it’s very old, and by Thanksgiving, it irks me that they don’t take care of their own leaves. Being a gracious neighbor becomes a little harder those weeks.
Hey Diana,
Here in Northern Virginia, we have had a few frosts, getting as low as 29F. Gathering a few more things out of the garden and then the end of season clean-up.
I have taken the tarp off my greenhouse and it is getting toasty in there. It is 20x20 and generates some good heat, which I blow into the house so the living quarters is very warm for most of the day and into the early hours before the heat pump needs to kick in. This is, of course, on days when the sun is shining.
Once it gets a bit cooler, I will start my winter greens in the greenhouse.
Hit 42° last night here apparently.
“Being a gracious neighbor becomes a little harder those weeks.”
At a past house I owned in a suburban setting, I had two Silver Maples that produced enough leaves to cover the lawn to knee-high every year. That was a PITA and something I dreaded. Dad would help me once a while, just for something for him to do, and I had bought the house from him in the first place, so he was well aware of the PITA-factor involved!
He rigged up a winch on the back of his truck, we’d lay down a tarp that was tied at the corners to the winch, then we’d rake the leaves onto the tarp, and he would dump them in the back of the truck and cart them off to the dump.
Pretty nifty, and made quick work of things. However, it was a waste of some perfectly good leaves, though I had nowhere to use them all.
My neighbor was the persnickety one, so I spent a lot of time raking MY leaves from HIS lawn, too. ;)
“Once it gets a bit cooler, I will start my winter greens in the greenhouse.”
I’ve got lettuces and spinach going right now in my unheated greenhouse. I’ll snag some pictures and get them posted this week. Things are looking good!
We use the tarp method and drag the tarp over to the hill on the backside of our yard. Amazingly those humongous leaf piles turn into almost nothing after a year. Your suggestions about how to use the leaves has me thinking to put a leaf mulcher on my Christmas wish list.
My greenhouse is too warm until the weather cools down a bit.
Thanks, Pete!
I feel the same way about a small wood chipper for the never-ending fallen branches around here. Electric. That would be a DREAM gift! :)
It’s funny, the things Gardeners want. :)
Well, I’ll relate a small success.
My wife’s egg plants just did not do well. Then about the tenth of September, that changed and the plant began to produce blooms and fruit.
Well, fall was coming and cool and cold. I brought the big pot in the house by the glass door. I read up on pollination and learned it was actually very easy. I used a small paint brush to transfer pollen from the male to the female flowers.
It worked. In doors, the plant is producing four new egg plants. The flowers have ceased at least temporarily. We’ll see how it progresses
It has been an interesting experiment
The plants suffered from neglect through a spell of lack of water, being root bound, and in the wrong kinds of pots -- and then from getting drenched and jostled by Hurricane Ian when they were suddenly given to me for safekeeping on the eve of the storm. I would like to rehabilitate the bedraggled survivors for return to my mother in good, even glowing condition if possible.
My plan if to repot them, put them in one or more aquariums under grow lights and warm, humid conditions. I am not a plant person. Am I on the right track?
They would love that. I wouldn’t bother with potting them until they’re revived; just leave them loose in moist bark chunks in the aquarium. Leave the top open, though, and mist them every week. You want moist conditions, not soaking wet.
Also add some fertilizer to the routine. I use a spray on (so you hit both the leaves and the roots) from Miracle Grow that my orchids have loved.
I am re-habbing one for a friend right now, too. This one wasn’t nearly as far gone as what you’re dealing with, though.
And, if all else fails, just buy Dear Old Mom a few new ones. ;)
Good for you! I hope they make it to maturity for you. :)
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