Save the leaves! Save the leaves!
It’s fall. That means that it’s time to save some leaves.
Why save the leaves?
For one, they make great garden mulch. Spread them over top of your garden and protect tender plants from the winter rain and snow. Leaf mulch also protects your soil from winter time erosion.
Leaves are also excellent brown material for your compost. Some people add torn up newspaper to the compost, but leaves are even better. Compost that has a lot of vegetable peelings and green grass is fine, but it needs some carbon to balance out all of the green, nitrogen-rich material or the compost will get sticky, smelly, and be slow to decompose.
Now, if you’re a person like me who is relatively treeless (I have a wimpy little Japanese maple), do not despair. You can find leaves elsewhere. Some like to gather leaves in parks, but parks staff may not like this, unless they blow the leaves into piles and have them taken away. I’d recommend asking neighbors instead. Many people do not use their leaves. Instead, they bag them and throw them away. They may even pay to have them taken away. Ask them if you can have some of the leaves instead, and go and bag them yourself. You get free leaves, they get free leaf disposal. It’s a win win. If you are going to spread the resulting compost on your garden, just make sure that you are all right with the gardening practices of said neighbor. If you want pesticide-free leaves, make sure that the neighbor hasn’t sprayed the tree.
Where do you store your leaves? Many people have old garbage bins specifically for this purpose. Some simply pile the leaves in an unused and less frequently-visited part of the property. Come spring when the leaves are less numerous, take the leaves out of your bins and place a layer into the compost after you put in your greens.
So save the leaves. They’re one of the keys to a happy compost.
Image Credit: Colin Broug