Those beautiful Autumn leaves that are changing color from summer green to red, orange, yellow, and other vibrant colors are going to be gold for your compost and soil.
You can enrich your garden using Autumn leaves by collecting and shredding them to be added as brown material for your compost. If you don’t mind a longer decomposing time you can omit shredding the leaves.
When you add leaves as a brown material to your compost bin you should add an equal amount of green materials and they should be turned weekly.
Dry leaves are a powerhouse of nutrients for your soil, containing twice as much mineral content as manure.
Not only do they add great nutrients to your soil, they also aerate the soil and provide a great place for those good bugs to overwinter.
These leaves will add minerals and nitrogen to enrich your soil and compost to support your garden plants the next year.
Almost any leaves are good to use but these leaves should be avoided black walnut and eucalyptus leaves which contain a natural herbicide that can affect seed germination. It is a good idea to limit the amount of Oak leaves since these leaves are high in tannins which are acidic.
If you use the leaves as a winter blanket over your garden it will reduce soil compaction, soil runoff, and nutrients in the soil being depleted.
If you do not have room in your compost bin you can build an easy storage system to hold the leaves until you have room to add them in your compost.
If you don’t have enough leaves from your own yard you can ask neighbors for their leaves and I am sure they would be happy to provide them to you.
Using leaves to protect your garden from winter rains and snow and using them in your compost is easy and cost nothing but time to rake them up and mow over them to shred them into smaller pieces.
When you enrich your garden using Autumn leaves you are kick-starting your garden for next Spring.
