You will get some creative ways to use fall leaves for your garden from here. I could waste your time getting poetic about the joys of fall in the garden. And I could talk about the beautiful colors, the cooler temperatures, and the fall harvest. I could tell you how grateful I am for such a successful gardening season. I could go on and on about how beautiful this is a time of year. But I’m not going to do it because, to be honest, falling can be a huge pain in the buttocks. Finding a use for all the pages you’re burning. With the following inspiring ideas, these leaves can be used quite creatively to nourish your garden soil.
The leaves are seriously falling now, and while my post last week gave you 6 reasons not to clean your garden this fall, I haven’t discussed what to do with all the leaves that are piling up. on your lawn. Raking is one of my least favorite garden chores and it’s a chore! And while you don’t have to rake every last leaf of your perennial beds (and neither should you, read last week’s post again for some of the reasons for housework. Why you have to remove most of the blades from the lawn. Otherwise, you’ll have bald patches and matted brown grass as spring progresses. You will get some creative ways to use fall leaves for your garden from below:
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Use fall leaves to feed your garden soil
To limit the pain factor, reduce the volume of fall leaves that homeowners throw away each year and give you plenty of ideas for feeding your garden soil. We listed the best ways to use fall leaves for your garden.
Feed your lawn
You might not think that making lawn fertilizer is one of the ways to use fall leaves, but the easiest way to deal with fall leaves is not to treat them at all. Use your lawnmower to cut the leaves into small pieces instead of raking them. It may take two or three passes, but the leaves will be breaking in no time. The mower spreads these small pieces of the blade across the lawn, preventing them from forming a dense mat. Because they are so small, they decompose quickly, feeding germs and eventually lawns. It’s good for you and your lawn.
Make free mulch – Ways to use fall leaves for your garden
Autumn leaves are rich in several macro and micronutrients, as well as various trace elements. Use them as mulch not only to add these nutrients to the soil when the leaves break down but also to cut weeds and stabilize the soil temperature. To use as a mulch, crush the leaves first. I put the collection bag in my lawnmower and pass it over. When the bag is full, I leave the leaf fragments in the garden. You can also put the leaves in a 30 or 55-gallon plastic trash can and dip your wire cutter in the leaf box. Wiggle the wire cutter a bit and before you know it you’ve got a plastic half-bin full of shredded leaves.
Throw it in the garden and repeat the process until all of your gardens are covered with mulch. By doing this each fall, you are feeding your garden soil a diet rich in organic matter and nutrients.
Build a potato bin
In a previous article, I described a great way to grow a lot of potatoes in a very small space. You basically build a cylindrical metal frame, cover it with newspaper, fill it with a mixture of organic matter and compost, and plant seed potatoes in it. The leaves you collect this fall are the perfect basis for such a container. This is one of the ways in which the leaves fall. Now build and insert the wireframes and start filling them with leaves. In spring, the leaves partially decompose; You can add compost, mix, and voila! – Instant potato grow container! After harvesting the potatoes next summer, all that rotten leaves and compost are perfect for nourishing your garden soil.
Mulch your roses
Many roses, especially grafted hybrid teas, need extra protection from cold winter temperatures. Cover the base of the plant with plenty of leaves to protect the scion joint from freezing temperatures. For many years, I would buy straw or peat to build these mounds of protection, but I got smart and switched to using leaves instead. While I don’t recommend stacking uncrushed leaves around perennials as they can form a dense mat and rot the plant, roses don’t seem to bother as long as you remember to remove the mulch in early April. . .
Make pumpkin and squash rings
This is one of my favorite and smartest tips for using the leaves I pluck from my lawn every fall. I have several rings of wire mesh a foot high; Each ring measures between three and four feet in diameter. I leave these tires in the garden each fall and place them where I want to grow my squash and winter squash for the next season. Once in place, I fill the rings to the brim with leaves, then throw dirt balls at them so the leaves don’t fly off. In the spring, the leaves partially decompose and have drooped a little. I fill the rings to the brim with a neighbor’s annual compost and horse manure mixture.
I stir everything with a fork and plant three to five pumpkin seeds per ring. Works like a charm. When I finished harvesting the pumpkins at the end of the year, I spread the rotten leaves and manure in the garden. It’s just another great way to nourish your garden soil!
Ways to use fall leaves for your garden – Set up a worm bin
Here is a simple step-by-step plan for creating a worm compost bin. You will find that the plan uses shredded newspapers as litter for the worms. At this time of year, however, you can start a worm bin with dry leaves instead of or in combination with shredded newspapers. Happy worms = lots of mollusk worms = happy plants.
Build a new garden
Some people call it lasagna gardening, others call it foliar composting or team gardening. Semantics aside, the method involves stacking layers of organic matter in the soil, waiting for it to decompose, and then opening a new garden there. It’s a great way to make a new bed without renting a lawnmower or breaking the bar. Fall leaves are great composting material and one of the best ways to use fall leaves. Add manure, untreated grass clippings, shredded newspapers, cardboard, straw, kitchen scraps, compost, and other organic produce this fall and you have a new garden to plant when spring comes.
You can put them on hold until spring
One of the easiest ways to use fall leaves is to make one of my favorite mulches for my tomato garden. It’s the combination of newspapers covered in sheets from last year. Before planting my tomatoes, I cover the entire area of the garden with a layer of ten sheets of newspaper. Then I cover the diary with the diaries from last year. When I’m ready to plant, I cut a small X out of the newspaper where I want to place and plant through each of my tomatoes. Mulch helps remove pathogens from the soil and reduces watering and weeds. I stack some of my leaves in a mound next to my compost bin each fall to use it specifically for this purpose.
Mulch the asparagus bed
Since my asparagus bed is separate from my garden, it is often ignored. But I find that if I cover it with shredded leaves every fall, I have much less competition from weeds during the growing season and never have to water it. I spread a two-inch layer of shredded sheets on the bed after getting a few hard freezes. At that time, I also cut off the old leaves and threw them on the compost heap. As the shredded leaf breaks down over time, it constantly nourishes the soil in your garden by slowly releasing organic substances and nutrients into the soil.
Save them for later – Ways to use fall leaves for your garden
and one of the last ways to use fall leaves is to put them “in the bank”. And by “in the bank” I mean “in garbage bags”. I always have a few black plastic garbage bags full of dry fall leaves next to my compost pile. When summer rolls around, when I have a ton of nitrogen-rich green material and a shortage of carbon-rich brown material, I can reach into one of the bags and pull out a few handfuls of leaves to add to the pile. According to this science-based composting plan, your compost pile should ideally contain three parts of carbon-rich brown material and one part of nitrogen-rich green material (by volume).
For every gallon bucket of kitchen scraps and grass, you toss in the pile, you should have three three-gallon buckets of fall leaves or straw to cover it. It balances the finished product and makes sure it disintegrates at a reasonable rate. And all gardeners already know how good the resulting compost is for nourishing their garden soil – it’s the best!
Ready your raspberries
Black and red raspberries thrive when mulched with a 2-inch layer of shredded leaves each fall. The leaves add organic substances and vital nutrients to the soil as they break down and help reduce competition from weeds. I prune my raspberries in the spring, so spreading the shredded leaves around the raspberry field on the tall stems can be a bit tricky. And wear long pants, long sleeves, safety glasses and gloves for this job. I use a pitchfork to pull the leaf fragments out of our tractor cart and throw them on the bed. In the “lazy years”, I forgot to shred the leaves before throwing them in the raspberry garden. It seems to work well too, as long as you don’t add so many leaves that it chokes off the new growth in the spring.
Make leaf mold
Make leaf mold is the best ways to use fall leaves for your garden. My local supply garden charges $ 40.00 plus shipping for one cubic yard of leaf mold. Do you know what leaf mold is? These are decomposed leaves. Guess what? You can do it for free. This is one of the easiest ways to use fall leaves to nourish your garden soil. Just stack your sheets somewhere in the woods or at the edge of your property and wait. Over time, they’ll break down into the same beautiful, rich, and brittle leaf shape that a fool pays $ 40.00 per cubic meter. Yes, they will disintegrate faster if you cut them first, but you don’t have to.
