Don't Waste Those Leaves!

What do you do with the fallen leaves that pile up in your yards and garden this time of year? I often see people raking them up madly and shoving them into garbage bags to be carted off to the landfill, a practice that makes me shake my head in wonder. Fallen leaves so many uses in the garden!

When I gardened in northern B.C., leaves were one of my main defenses against winter cold. Every year I raked piles of fallen leaves over the garden beds and around shrubs to protect them from freezing. A leaf mulch of six to twelve inches thick is especially critical when the temperatures drop before the deep snow falls.

Here in the much warmer climes of southern B.C., I only use this kind of leaf mulch to protect plants that are tender. (You should chop or shred whole leaves before you use them as mulch, as whole leaves can form a dense mat that water can't penetrate.) While you can use leaf mulch in the garden to conserve water, and to cut down on weeding chores, just as you would any mulch, most of my fallen leaves are used to create compost.

Leaf mold, like many organic composts, is a wonderful source of nutrients for the garden. It's high in calcium and magnesium. Don't be afraid to use it because you think leaf mold will be too acidic; as leaves rot, they'll lost their acidic qualities, even oak leaves.

It's also a myth that you have to wait three years until the leaves rot into leaf mold before you can use composted leaves in your flower and vegetable beds. You should, however, let the leaves rot for at least nine months before you use them, because rotting leaves produce phenols during the first six to eight months of rotting that inhibit the growth of seedling roots. These phenols disappear after nine months of weathering.

Our house is on a city lot, but we have three composters in our back yard. One of these is devoted entirely to leaves, an open-sided rectangular affair about six feet by 3 feet. We built it ourselves out of wood and stucco wire, knowing that we would have too many leaves to fit into the standard plastic composter.

For several years, we simply raked the leaves up in the fall, and threw them in the composter, where they slowly turned into a lovely black compost that we use all around the gardens. But this year we bought a Weed Eater leaf blower/vacuum that speeds up the whole process considerably. Instead of having to rake the leaves up and carry them to the composter, now we use the blower/vacuum to suck them up and mulch them, and then just empty the bag into the composter. The Weed Eater does a great job of shredding the leaves, and it's electric, so it's much less painful to our ears and those of our neighbours.

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