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Don’t waste fall leaves

Eloise Ogden/MDN Instead of raking leaves in your yard after they fall from the trees, there are other uses for them.

Each year as the leaves fall, the tradition has been to eliminate them. I am old enough to remember my grandpa burning them in big piles in the garden. Now the usual fall chore is to bag them and send them to the land fill. Don’t!!! They are valuable to your yard.

If you have a compost bin or mound, place them there. To speed up the composting process, run them through your lawn mower as this helps the composting organisms to break it down faster. Add a cup or two of lawn fertilizer to the pile to also help the process. After the leaves are composted, spread the compost back on your flower and vegetable gardens and beds. The compost does not have to be tilled into the soil. Spread it on the surface and earthworms will feed on it and carry it down into the soil.

Leaves can also be placed directly on perennial beds and left over winter. They will help to insulate the plants over winter. This is particularly important if you “push the zones” and have zone 4 and 5 perennials in your gardens. There is no need to “clean up” the leaves in these beds in the spring. The earthworms and other organisms will feed on them and by late spring very little if any leaves are left in view. And you will have more fertile soil that has better moisture holding capacity than it did before the leaf mulch was added. Another benefit of the increased organic matter from the leaves is your soil will be much easier to dig in to plant. Organic matter will loosen up soil.

Leaves also make great insulation around tender roses. Make a big circle of poultry netting around the rose, anchor it into the ground, and fill with leaves. Place a few branches or more poultry netting over the top to hold the leaves. After all danger of a deep frost is gone in the spring, remove the poultry netting, spread the leaves around your rose bed, and let nature do its magic.

But, before you do all of the above, rake your leaves into a big pile and let the kids jump and play in them!!! That is one of those fun fall things they will remember as adults. And you as an adult can jump in them too!!! No age limit on being a kid!!

This is Ken Eraas’ final horticulture article as horticulture assistant with NDSU Extension Service-Ward County.

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