Plan now to bag or mulch falling leaves

BY PAT FULLER

OSU Ext. master gardener volunteer

The leaves are falling; the leaves are falling.

Well, thank goodness they are not falling yet. But they will be before you know it. Thus, planning for the gift of leaves must begin now.

Trying to stay one step ahead of the leaves falling into landscape makes me wonder if I should mulch or bag them. Mulching the leaves puts them back onto the lawn in teeny-tiny pieces to be broken down by microbes that will release the nutrients back into the soil and begin the first stage of the nutrient cycle. Bagging the leaves disposes of them for somebody else to worry about. Yes, I will still have the expense and bother of keeping recyclable paper bags on hand and the work of collecting the leaves, bagging them and then putting those bags on the curb around collection time.

But there is a better way to save yourself some money and be environmentally responsible at the same time.

In my garden, I have collected the leaves in our chomping-munching machine that vacuums up the leaves, shreds them into small pieces and collects them in a large bag. It doesn’t take much for the bag to fill with leaves from the large number of huge oaks. We have an area in the yard where we have a compost pile, and we begin our annual leaf collection near there.

By the time the last leaf has fallen, we have amassed a large number of leaf piles in and around the compost area and in some of the other out of the way areas in the landscape. This is where they will stay until spring when, after they have dried out, we will give them another run through the shredder before spreading them on the gardens as a top layer of mulching material.

Here are the advantages: a lovely brown uniform layer of topping in the beds in and around the shade loving perennials and woody ornamentals. We lay this on about three to five inches thick, depending on how much we have. This will help in retaining moisture in the soil. The slugs really seem to hate this top layer so it saves the hostas. It doesn’t blow away with the wind. The shredded leaf mulch will break down as the summer wears on and by time fall arrives there will be little evidence of it left in the garden. But that’s it: the leaves have been used as mulch, we’ve recycled them, we’ve saved ourselves some money and we are only out some time and energy. It’s a win-win-win all the way around.

If you want to compost your chopped leaves, remember they are only one part of a good composting system. To get your plan together for composting and using your leaves next month, visit go.osu.edu/compostleaves.