When fall comes and there are millions of leaves falling in your yard, it may be hard to see anything but work. Work raking the leaves, bagging them up and disposing of them. Instead, look at the leaves as one of the most valuable assets in your yard and it’s free. How is this possible? Read on.
Benefits of Using Leaves as Mulch
Every fall, you will want to add mulch to your perennial plants to help them get through the winter. Mulch is spread on top of the soil and around the plants. There are many benefits to mulch, including:
- Control the Moisture of Your Soil Mulch will prevent the evaporation of the moisture in the soil. By covering the soil with mulch, the moisture will remain in the soil for your plants to use.
- Provide Shade for the Seeds Mulch can prevent weed seeds from growing by blocking out the sunlight. This means a lot less work for the gardener.
- Control the Temperature Mulch will help to stabilize the soil temperature and even help to keep the soil warmer, which is especially important in cold weather climates.
- Feed the Soil Organic mulch will eventually decompose and add its nutrients to the soil. Leaf mulch is an organic mulch. This can lessen the need for fertilizers.
- Prevent Soil Erosion If you live in an area of high winds, mulch will help to prevent soil erosion. This can be a serious problem, especially in the winter when there is no plant material or foliage to protect the soil.
How to Make Leaf Mulch
If you have deciduous trees and therefore plenty of leaves, you can make leaf mulch. There is not much to turn the leaves into mulch. When the leaves are dry, you need to chop them into small pieces. This can be done easily with your lawn mower set to the mulching setting. Once the leaves are chopped, it is ready to use.
How to Apply the Leaf Mulch
Once you have chopped up the leaves, simply spread the mulch around your plants. Mulch should be three to four inches deep around trees and shrubs and about two to three inches around perennial plants. Simply surround the shrub with chicken wire and fill the space up with the leaf mulch. Remove the mulch in the spring before the roses start to bud.
Where to Use Leaf Mulch
Leaf mulch can also be used to protect more tender plants like roses, including your gorgeous climbing roses. It can also be used with newspaper to start a new garden bed or extend an existing bed. If you want to start a new garden, you may have to contend with an existing lawn. The process of removing sod is very labor-intensive and not much fun.
An alternative is to outline the area for your new garden in the fall and cover the lawn with several layers of newspaper. To do this:
- Wet the paper down to make the paper stick together and then cover it with the leaf mulch. The newspaper and mulch will smother the grass and weeds to kill both by springtime. Both the newspaper and the leaf mulch will eventually decompose and add organic matter to the soil.
- Next spring, just cut a hole into the newspaper and plant your shrubs or trees. Perennials can be added the same way. Just add more mulch each season.
Leaf mulch can also be used in the vegetable garden. Spread a layer of chopped leaves on the garden and work it into the soil. Because it is chopped into small pieces, the mulch will decompose over the winter.
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What Is the Difference Between Leaf Mulch and Leaf Mold?
The preparation of the leaves for leaf mulch and leaf mold is the same: The leaves are chopped up before they are used. The difference is, with leaf mulch, you use it right away in its dry form. Leaf mold takes a few months to make. To make leaf mold:
- Add water to the chopped leaves and set them aside to decompose. (Hint: You can skip the chopping stage, but it will double the time needed to change the leaves into leaf mold.)
- After about six months, the leaves will have turned into a rich, dark soil-like form. It should smell earthy and fresh. Turning leaves into leaf mold can be speeded up by regularly adding water to the pile and turning the pile about once a month.
How Does Leaf Mold Help Your Garden?
Since there is nothing in the leaf mold, like plant material or soil, to add nutrients to the leaf mold, do not substitute it for compost. The huge benefit that leaf mold brings to the garden is that it is a soil conditioner.
Leaf mold can increase your soil’s ability to retain moisture by 50 percent. It also provides a habitat for earthworms and soil bacteria. Leaf mold is a great additive for your perennial plants and, because of its water-retaining ability, it is a great additive in your pots and container garden.
Can You Use Leaves for Compost?
Dried leaves are great for use as the carbon ingredient when making compost. Compost is made by layering the dried material with the green nitrogen ingredient. To make a good pile that doesn’t smell (your compost pile should never smell, regardless of what stage the compost is in and breaks down quickly), you need both green and brown material.
The green material can include lawn clippings, kitchen scraps and fresh garden clippings. The brown material includes fall leaves, shredded paper or dry straw.
The compost should be one part green and three parts brown, if possible. Add a shovel full of garden soil to provide the bacteria needed to break down the material, along with water to keep the compost working.
One problem you may run into is that you don’t always have a lot of both green and brown ingredients at the same time. In the fall, there are lots of leaves. When springtime comes, the grass starts growing and won’t stop. There are all those green grass clippings but no dried material.
If you can, set aside a couple of large leaf bags full of leaves. Seal them so no water can get in and save them for the spring.
When you look at the giant pile of leaves in your yard, you may wonder how you can ever use them all. Now that you know all their benefits, you will probably be sneaking leaves from your neighbors’ yard to get enough for your mulch, leaf mold and composting needs.
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