“Don’t let your leaves leave home” is the mantra of good gardeners everywhere. Leaves are full of nutrients that the trees have pulled from the earth, and they provide wonderful fertilizer for your garden. You’ve never seen Ma Nature sprinkling 10-10-10 fertilizer in the woods, but look how big the trees grow!

            Some books make composting sound difficult, but remember that Ma Nature doesn’t pile, layer and stir the leaves, nor does she buy special concoctions to break down the compost. In fact, everything that’s needed for compost is right there in your garden. Sure, we can get fancy with bins and tumblers, and special compost forks, but they merely hasten the process, they don’t make it better.

            The simplest way to compost is to do what nature does - just let the leaves fall where they are - but then the leaves are likely to blow every which way. In addition, if they fall onto your lawn or into shrubs, they can cause damage.

Shredding leaves will reduce their bulk, help them compost more quickly, and keep them from blowing all over the garden. I use two methods for shredding, depending on whether I want to start a new compost pile or merely use the leaves for mulch. If I want to start a compost pile, I like to use the lawnmower as a combination shredder, bagger and mixer. I just mow the lawn as usual without raking the leaves first. The leaves mixed with grass clippings break down very quickly.

Some subdivisions prohibit compost bins. If yours is one of them, you can plant a few tolerant shrubs such as Wax Myrtles or Yaupon Hollies in an out of the way corner, and dump the mixed clippings and grass behind them. Or you can shred just the leaves and use them for mulch.

For mulching, I like to use a leaf blower/bagger combination that shreds the leaves and deposits them into a bag. It reduces the volume by a factor of 10:1, and the leaves are great for mulching flower and shrub beds, as well as under trees. You can also use your mower for this, running the mower with the bagger attachment over piles of leaves. It serves the same purpose.

Shredded leaves can be used by themselves, or under your regular mulch. Used underneath, they can extend the life of your mulch by many months. This will save many of your landscape dollars, especially if you use pine straw. Just remember, as with all mulches, to keep them away from the stems of your plants. Damp mulch can cause rot to set in on our shrubs and trees if left against the bark during wet weather.

 For more detailed information on composting and mulching, see this PDF file from UGA.

d

My favorites are Maple leaves, but I have Water Oaks, Apples, Witch Hazels, Bald Cypress, White Ash  and Mulberry, too. One cool thing about the Bald Cypress is that the leaves are very, very fine and they usually fall in a neat ring right under the tree so it spends the winter looking like it has a burnt-orange tree skirt.

d