Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Leaves
Of all the mulch types, by far the best is leaves. They do absolutely everything right.
That's why when designing gardens I want to make sure to use plants that make a lot of
leaves — not just evergreens — and I want to design the beds to catch all of these leaves
too.
Leaves that fall on the lawn and on non-garden surfaces can be raked into the gardens or
mowed and left right on the lawn. If you don't have enough leaves, your neighbors will
usually be happy to give you theirs. When I worked as an organic gardener on residential
properties, I would go to the neighbors of my clients and ask for their leaves too. In many
cities, you can rake your leaves to the curb and a big truck will come by to pick them up.
But why would you want to give away the best garden mulch ingredient?
Ironically, some organic gardeners do get rid of their leaves and then pay a fortune to
buy the leaves back as leaf mold in the spring. Leaf mold is just leaves that have been
slightly decomposed. It's one of the best mulch types, too, but in most cases, the gardener
would have done much better to save the money and keep the leaves in the garden over
winter where they can have the benefit of protecting the soil.
If you have a layer of leaves in your garden that's thick enough, say two to four inches,
many weeds will be smothered. You'll still get some weeds, but they'll be so easy to pull
out that it won't matter. You can just drop them back on top of the leaves (if they don't
have seeds) to become part of the mulch.
Some people think leaves are not one of the most attractive mulch types for the garden,
but is a forest floor unattractive? Is the forest floor covered in two inches of bark? We've
been conditioned to think that bark mulch or bare soil is the most aesthetically pleasing, but
if you cover your garden in a rainbow of autumn leaves, I think you'll see it differently, es-
pecially now that you know all the benefits they provide. When we remove the leaves, we
are breaking nature's cycle and creating more work for ourselves.
So leaves are the number one best mulch type, but there are exceptions. In some cli-
mates, a thick layer of leaves over the winter may promote such wet conditions that disease
is actually increased. It's possible to have too many leaves if you have a lot of big trees or
if your beds are already covered in groundcovers and you don't want to totally smother
them. In that case, you may just have to compost them or give some away, to a friend or to
the city, although I have mulched 12 inches of leaves into some lawns with great success.
Actually, when I was a kid, I recall my dad would pile a bunch of leaves in the back of
the pickup truck, head down our rural street to where there were no houses, drop the tail-
gate, and hit the gas. It was so much fun watching the leaves get caught by the wind and
cover the sky like a thousand red and yellow butterflies. In hindsight, I have no idea why
we did this, but it was fun at the time. In fact, I suppose that's why we did it.
