#2 Gathering Leaves

     Yay! We are almost done gathering leaves. Most homeowners dread this time of year because they have to rake, bag and move leaves to the side of the road. Connecticut was particularly slow this year – our leaves turned late and they hung on the branches forever. When they did fall, they were covered by a surprise 4-8” snow cover. Then rain. Drove the madman bonkers!

Free Mulch

     We see our leaves as valuable because we use them as mulch. This year we were particularly excited-friend Bill helped the madman create a new leaf bin from our old wooden pallets. Our leaf pile became inefficient-a pile of leaves under the maple trees over the course of time decomposed and the trees seized the opportunity to send roots to gather the nutrients. This process took about 5 years, but this year marked the end of useable mulch from our pile. Our mulched leaves were full of tree roots making them impossible to retrieve. We had to pull out the roots with every shovelful of mulch – much too time consuming for the madman.

Old Pallets Get New Use

     As master gardeners, we like to use everything we have on hand and when we started thinking about a new pile we looked around to see what we have. Wood pallets, lots of them; we burn pellets all winter and they are delivered on pallets. Madman saw the pallets and said “Ah! Ha! Let’s use them!” We built a pallet frame around a single pallet base-like building with blocks. The bottom pallet was covered with landscape fabric to keep leaves from falling through the slats. Individual pallets were held together with 3” screws which will be easily removed if need be.

     We quickly realized that one pallet wasn’t big enough so it has expanded to four pallets. This keeps the leaves off the ground, away from tree roots – we also placed it in a more open spot. As soon as our leaves started to dry, we started to collect. We have a rear-bagging, mulching lawn mower which grinds up the leaves to make a better mulch. Progress was slow this year thanks to slow drying leaves, but we have almost filled the bin.

More Leaves, More Leaves…

     Bill dropped off a trailer full of mulched leaves. Since we never have enough of our own leaves, we do ask friends for help. We only take leaves from sources we can trust, meaning only from people who don’t go crazy pouring chemicals on the lawn to maintain the weed less, green look. The madman feels that any weedkillers applied to lawns can be picked up during the leaf gathering process and ultimately transfer to our garden. (Good thing we expanded the pallet bin-it is now pretty much full to capacity.)

     Once the ground freezes, we’ll cover some of the perennial and herb beds with mulch and Christmas tree branches (see, we do try to use everything!). The cover will help prevent the ground from thawing during warm days. We’ll use the rest of the mulched leaves in next year’s garden in order to prevent weed growth and retain moisture. The madman dislikes weeding almost as much as watering.

     If time allows this year we’ll go into the woods to clear leaves from the path. Over time, the deer, bobcat, bear, skunks and others have created a network of paths in the back woods (believe it or not, we live in suburbia but we share our land with wildlife). We keep the paths clear so we can visit this area of woodland – we have quite the fern garden and we’ll talk about the dogtooth violets and other ephemerals in the spring when they appear.

     Looks like the cocoa is ready.