Free Leaves and Free Trees
On Halloween morning several neighbors gathered at our house for warm apple cider and pumpkin bars. After my friend Katie and I gave a quick tree planting demo, we all fanned out down the street, planting Hedge Maples and Frontier Elms in our parking strips. Our whole block is really very excited about the new trees, but it will definitely be a few years before they yield enough leaves to actually warrant raking. In the meantime, I’ll have to continue stalking the alleyways of my neighborhood looking for yard waste bags filled with leaves. This weekend I got lucky and a man a few blocks up the street gave me all the leaves from his lawn! He even bagged them up all neat and tidy. So I rolled over there this morning and picked them up.
I’m planning on stockpiling the leaves and using them next summer to make compost. Here are a couple more ideas for putting leaves to work in the garden:
* Add them to a worm bin as bedding
* Put a 12 inch layer in your chicken run to keep mud down during the winter
* Use them as mulch around the base of raspberry and blackberry canes
* Hill your potatoes with leaf mold (leaves that have broken down over the winter) instead of soil. It makes them so much easier to harvest.
There are really only two things to keep in mind with leaves. First, avoid using broadleaf evergeen leaves (i.e. from magnolias, rhodies, etc) in compost because they take forever, and I mean for-ev-er, to break down—they do however make a fine mulch in ornamental beds. Second, leaves tend to form a big, mushy mat when they get wet. Prevent this problem, and help them break down faster, by shredding the leaves before using them in the garden.
If, like me, you do not happen to own a chipper shredder you can lay them out in a line on the lawn and run over them with a mower that has a bag attachment. The mower chops up the leaves, mixes them with grass, and deposits them in the bag. So easy! You can also fill a clean garbage can 3/4 full with leaves. Then, stick a string trimmer into the can and give the leaves a good zap, zap—it’s just like using an immersion blender to puree soup!
I was out leafing today. I snagged seven bags full to the top with leaves. Sadly I can’t do it in my neighborhood since we don’t have pickup so people don’t leave them out. But I did catch my neighbor raking and asked for his bags. He left them on the side of the house for me. Score! I too mow my leaves before putting them in a bin. If I don’t the oak leaves will take forever to break down.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:59 pmYou can come to my house in Tacoma. We have three huge maples that all drop their leaves in succession, so we rake for about 6 weeks non-stop and don’t have enough space for all that mulch.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:02 pmThank you for sharing about the leaves and potatoes. My dad did this for a few years, when I was young. It was wonderful to be able to gently see them as they grew and they were so clean!
November 4th, 2009 at 8:55 amDaphne–I’m glad to know you are a fellow leaf snatcher! Good thing you have a nice neighbor with a good leaf supply! All of my immediate neighbors either have small trees or evergreens, so I too have to go further afield.
Nicole–I envy your position! Though I’m sure the novelty of raking wears off after about the 2nd week!
Lorie–No problem. I’m never going back to hilling with soil. The leaf method is so much easier on so many levels. It makes hilling, harvesting, and watering easier!
November 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm