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As a kid, the fall season meant playing in the leaves. I couldn’t wait to build forts out of them, rake huge mounds to jump into, and throw handfuls into the air to watch them scatter in the wind. In the grown-person arena, the leaves symbolize a time for viewing gorgeous color and transformation. People drive for hours to get out in the country to see them at their peak.
The Garden Coach, celebrating the leaves 43 years ago
But then those beautiful works of art fall to the earth, turn brown, and cover the landscape like nature’s blanket. The wind blows them around and people seem to get annoyed by their invasive behavior. According to humans, leaves are in places they shouldn’t be—like stairwells, gutters, sidewalks and garden beds still teeming with visual interest. Thus begins the enormous job of removing all those leaves off your property, and assigning them a new location.
Enormous amounts of leaves are swept to the curbside every year, to be sucked up by huge vacuums and hauled and dumped into a collecting area.
It appears most people living in the city only have a few options. Rake them to the curb, put them in waste refuse bags, or gather them up for yard waste dumpsters. I have to say, I always cringe when I see those brown paper yard waste bags filled to capacity with something that can be utilized with great value right in your own yard!
Free organic material
I’m not a purist, and I don’t expect urban-dwellers to leave their leaves where they fall, as out in the woodlands. But it doesn’t hurt to rethink what you can do with FREE organic material that drops at your doorstep. Trees are providing natural mulch for the plants, and basically providing future soil for microbes and living things. I think people don’t see it as mulch, because it’s not in the tidy, ground-up form that people see at nurseries.
Here are some suggestions what do with your leaves:
Holding area for leaves made out of wire and stakes. It may not look like it, but this held a very large amount of leaves. In three months, it had flattened halfway down.
If you have the space, create an area where you can heap all your leaves into a contained area. You can build this quickly with wire that’s three feet high. The shape doesn’t have to be perfect; it's just preventing the leaves from blowing away. Once the leaves are in this contained area, you will be amazed at how quickly the pile compresses, which means more leaves can to be added on top. You can use this temporary pile as your “brown source,” for a compost bin. Or, you can just let the pile decompose and rot. If you turn over the material every few months, the leaves will break down faster.
A friend gearing up to use her Brush Master. It was a beautiful sight to see this in action.
Get a high-end yard toy such as a Brush Master, which will finely grind up leaves for leaf compost, which you can use as mulch or work into the soil as organic material. It also grinds up branches from trees/shrubs (if they're no thicker than three inches), and spits out wood chips for mulching beds. If you don't want to buy new equipment, I’ve also seen and heard of people running over the leaves over with a lawnmower to grind them up. Can’t imagine it’s great for your mower. But you will end up with leaf compost.
Or—and I know this is shocking!—I have actually left leaves on my beds over the winter, or raked them into beds that had exposed soil. I waited till the spring to rake them up. By then, they had done the job of insulating the plants underneath, just as nature intended them to do.
I would be so interested to hear what you do with your leaves to keep them on your property and reuse them with positive outcomes for sustainability. Please share your experiences in the comment box; it’s the best way for gardeners to learn. Or email me directly. I hate to do it, but I have to leaf you now. ;)
Beth Gellman is an EarthDance Farm Alumn and a landscape designer specializing in edible food gardens and community gardens. To contact The Garden Coach, please email Beth at gellmandesign@yahoo.com.
