Leave the Leaves!

With each passing breeze, more leaves are falling off the tree and on to your lawn, driveway or front walk. It it this time of year that being an environmentalist can really pay off! Unlike my neighbours who diligently gather up all the leaves and put them into bags for the city to take away, I take the much easier route of just raking the leaves directly into the garden.

Apart from the obvious benefit of making the job easier, leaves are a wonderful way to enrich your soil and protect tender plants from the chill of the winter months. In the spring all that has to be done is dig the leaves a little bit into the soil to continue composting. This process is such a wonderful way of increasing the organic nutrients in the soil that I even know of some people who will pilfer their neighbours leaves for additional compost material!

As an added benefit, you do not even have to do a good job of raking the leaves off the grass. A small scattering of leaf material also helps the soil for the grass. It is advised though that you do take the majority of leaves off the grass so it can grow better in the spring rather then be covered up.

The only downside with this approach, is that any 'weeds' such as maple keys that are in leaf material will also become part of the garden. As a result, you might find the occasional sapling growing inamongst your daisies. When this happens to me, I first decide if I want a tree to grow there. If it seems like a good idea, or I am not sure, I will leave it. If it is not a good spot for a tree than it is just a matter of one good yank! For better or worse, this approach has resulted in the addition of three or four trees in my backyard!