by Diane Sagers

CORRESPONDENT

In our high mountain home, autumn descends by degrees. It is a delightful phenomenon. Take a drive to the mountains in northern Utah sometime in September and you can get your first taste of autumn. Broad-leafed trees present a beautiful contrast against themselves and surrounding conifers as the leaves begin to turn from green to gold and orange. As the days pass, the color moves downhill until Mother Nature puts her brush to the palette and paints the valley trees their various bright hues.

It is even more beautiful to see when autumn follows a spring and summer with adequate rainfall. But color change always comes too close to leaf drop. The trees turn and then all too soon the leaves fall to the ground. Summer lawn mowing is replaced by autumn leaf raking in preparation for winter snow shoveling. There is always something to do in the landscape.

That work might seem less like drudgery if you can learn to think of leaves as great plant food and outstanding compost to improve our otherwise impoverished soils. Best of all, this source of plant food and soil conditioner is free. It doesn't get much better than that.

You can find a lot of ways to use this wonderful plant improvement tool, and it doesn't have to be strenuous work. It can be as simple as raking or blowing leaves onto nearby flowerbeds, wetting them down or throwing a bit of soil on, and then leaving them to do their magic over the winter months.

Compare that effort with the work required to put them into bags and send them to the landfill. Some people just want tidiness more than anything, so they are pleased to bag them up and send them off with the trash. Ironically, in the spring they may spend a good deal of money on bagged compost, soil pep, fertilizers and other products.

If you know someone who follows that logic, offer to take the leaves off their hands. Everybody benefits. The leaves are gone from where they are not wanted and your soil gets the benefit of a few extra bags of leaves.

Leaves are also an excellent source of organic matter, which all soils can use. They break down relatively slowly so they help lighten the soil or provide a ground cover to help hold moisture. They are typically not full of weed seeds since trees finish their flowering-seeding cycle early in the summer. Manures, which also make excellent compost, tend to carry weed seeds in varying quantities.

If you have heavy clay (poorly drained soil) it helps break up the soil components and encourages better drainage. If you have loose soil that drains too quickly, the organic matter will help hold the moisture near the plant roots for a longer time.

Leaves are full of nutrients, especially micronutrients not generally found in commercial fertilizers. As they break down, the nutrients are released. Spread them over the ground around newly transplanted plants in the spring and summer to help hold in soil moisture.

As an extra bonus, leaves can serve as a source of food for earthworms and these lowly creatures are very beneficial to gardens.

You have several choices to prepare the leaves for winter. If you leave them on the lawn where they fell without raking them, plan on patches of dead turf in the spring. Leaves tend to compact under moisture and snow and shut out sunlight and oxygen the turf needs.

A no-rake option is to use a leaf blower, blowing leaves into piles where you can access them. Some people invest in a lawn vacuum that sucks up the leaves and small sticks, shreds them into fine particles and puts them in a bag. A lawnmower with a grass catcher attachment will do nearly the same thing, although it may not chop the leaves as fine. You can empty the bag of already-prepared leaves onto garden areas or into compost heaps.

If the weather holds out, you might even consider tilling or turning the shredded leaves into the top 6 inches of your garden soil. This loosens the soil so it will be ready earlier in the spring for planting. Another benefit of fall tilling is because insect eggs are exposed to the elements, you may have fewer insects in the spring.

If you want to go the distance and create a wonderful, rich composted product, mound up a bunch of leaves either into a pile on the garden or into an enclosure so the wind won't scatter them back into your yard. Throw a little nitrogen and a few shovelfuls of soil into the mix to encourage decomposition and wet it all down to get it started. Winter weather being what it is, most of us won't be out turning the compost pile over the next few months. That is fine because you don't want to completely break down the leaves; just enough so they will be an effective spring mulch.

If you want to, cover the mulch bins with tarp or plastic over the winter and mix the leaf bins in March. The extra mixing is nice but not essential.

You might want to use leaves to mulch some of your plants over the winter. Don't get too hasty in this process. The purpose of this mulch is not the same as in the summer when you are trying to hold weeds down and keep water from evaporating out of the soil. As the ground becomes frozen, apply autumn leaves around the base of rose bushes or possibly biennial plants. The leaves help keep the ground frozen so it doesn't freeze/thaw freeze/thaw, thrusting plants out of the ground. Keeping the ground frozen also helps protect the roots and base of roses and similar plants stay the same temperature so they are not damaged by freezing and thawing.

The leaves you put on as mulch provide the added benefit of breaking down gradually and becoming a good source of compost and fertilizer later next year.