Consider Fall Leaves a Gift from Nature – InkFreeNews.com

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Clayton Garden Center: quality service with a local touch

By Melinda Myers
Guest columnist

Put fall leaves to work in your landscape. This valuable resource makes excellent mulch in flower beds, adds organic matter and nutrients to the soil, provides habitat for many beneficial insects, and provides insulation for ground-dwelling queen bumblebees, toads, and more. .

Leave all disease-free leaves in flower beds, but keep them away from tree trunks and shrub stems. Mulch piles against trunks or stems create a moist environment more prone to rot and disease. It also provides a hiding place next to these plants for voles that feed on the bark during the winter.

Avoid thick layers of leaves, six inches or more deep, in flower beds. They can block sunlight and smother the plants below. Remove leaves from the crowns of perennials and move excess leaves to gardens with little or no mulch.

Use your mower to recycle fall leaves that land on the lawn. When you mow the grass, you shred the leaves into small pieces. If they are the size of a quarter or less, your lawn will be fine. As these leaf pieces decompose, they add organic matter and nutrients to the soil.

When the lawn is overwhelmed with leaves, burn a few extra calories and rake them into nearby flower beds. Whole leaves provide the best habitat for overwintering insects. Spread the leaves over the soil surface to help insulate roots, conserve moisture, suppress weeds and improve the soil as it decomposes.

If your beds are already full of leaves or this is impractical, attach the bagger to the mower to mulch and collect excess leaves from the lawn. This fall, only use grass clippings collected from lawns and leaves that have not been treated with weedkiller.

Dig extra shredded leaves from vacant annual flower and vegetable gardens or incorporate them into the soil while you prepare new beds. They will decompose over the winter, improving drainage in heavy clay soils and increasing water-holding capacity in fast-draining soils.

Bag up any shredded leaves you want to save for next season. Store them out of sight for the winter under trees or around the foundation of your home for extra insulation.

Create compost with fall leaves, plant-based kitchen scraps and other landscape debris. Do not use meat, bones or dairy products that may attract rodents, charcoal ashes, and human, animal or bird feces that may contain disease-causing organisms. Avoid diseased and insect-infested plant debris, perennial weeds and seeded weeds. These can survive in compost piles that don’t produce enough heat to kill them and end up in the garden in the compost.

Oak and large maple leaves make excellent mulch and additions to the compost pile, but decompose slowly. Shred them first with your lawn mower or leaf mulcher for faster results.

You can compost black walnut, bay and eucalyptus leaves which contain chemicals toxic to other plants. Shred them first to speed up decomposition and when they are completely broken down, the compost is safe to use in the garden.

As you begin to use fall leaves in your landscape, you will begin to view them as a gift, not a curse, from nature.

Melinda Myers has written more than 20 books on gardening, including Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition and small space gardening. She hosts Les Grands Cours »“How to Grow Anything” Video and Instant DVD Series and the national union Melinda’s Garden Moment radio program. Myers is a columnist and editor-in-chief of Birds & Blooms magazine. Myers’ website is www.MelindaMyers.com.