9 ways to deal with autumn leaves

Whether you love or hate doing it, raking leaves is an inevitable fall ritual. It's also an opportunity to harvest mulch and soil amendments for your garden. Here are nine practical ways to get rid of leaves and how you can put them to use in the garden.

[Image Credit: iStock.com/RobMattingley]

By creating beds near deciduous trees that can be filled with small shrubs and other plants that appreciate deep, natural mulch, you'll be providing an area into which you can "hide" fallen leaves.

• When the leaves fall, simply rake them into the beds after running over them once with your mower. The chopped up leaves provide nutrients for the plants. Best of all, being in deep beds means they won't tend to blow away.

Wet leaves are heavier than dry ones, but at least they tend to stay put when raked into a pile. Otherwise, if the day is blustery, you'll simply wind up chasing them around the yard or having to re-rake them into a pile.

• If you're not keen about picking up sopping wet leaves, cover them with a tarp and wait until the weather is sunny (but not windy) again. The heat accumulated under the tarp should "cook" away most of the moisture.

However, if you have allergies, it's best to wait to rake until the leaves are dry.

• Wet leaves can be a breeding ground for moulds and mildews that make allergy sufferers miserable.

If you have pine trees in your back yard, rake the needles as soon as they fall, before they get mixed with leaves, which usually fall down later.

• Pack them into garbage bags and keep them in a dry place until you need more mulch for azaleas, blueberries or other plants that like acidic soil conditions.

Raking up needles mixed with leaves can be a challenge because you'll wind up collecting mostly the larger leaves, as the needles tend to slip between the rake's tines.

High-nitrogen grass clippings combined with shredded, carbon-rich leaves form a particularly good composting material, so mow the leaves on the lawn to collect them in the bagging attachment.

• If you prepare planting space for spring flowers or vegetables in the fall, shredded leaves mixed with grass clippings make great winter mulch.
• When you rake back the mulch in spring, the soil will be ready to plant.

To save your back, instead of putting leaves into countless small bags (some municipalities no longer accept leaves in plastic garbage bags), put them into a wheelbarrow to transport to the curb or dump them on a large leaf pile in the corner of your garden.

• You could also rake them onto an old sheet or plastic tablecloth laid on the ground. When it's full, gather up the four corners and drag the bundle to the curb or leaf pile.
• If your municipality provides composting bins on wheels, you may also dump the leaves directly into the bin from the tarp. You may need some extra muscle to do this. And remember to not throw away the tarp!

If you have lots of trees in your backyard, chances are there will be tons of sticks. Keep them. You can use these sticks later as fireplace kindling.

• If you have a large yard, a brush pile kept in an out-of-the-way place can become a shelter for chipmunks, birds or other wildlife.

To turn leaves into nutrient-rich mulch, run them over with a mower twice before raking them into shrub beds or spreading them over unoccupied space in your vegetable garden.

• As the leaves continue to decompose, they release into the soil nutrients for plants.

The other benefit?

• Shredded leaves don't blow away the way whole leaves tend to do, and they don't pack into a smelly mess, either.

If you have a tiller, you can turn shredded leaves right into the soil.

• Not only is this a good way to make the leaves "disappear," but by spring they will have decomposed enough to provide a few nutrients for plants and lots of organic matter for your soil.

Leaves can take a long time to break down, but if you're patient then this year's "harvest" of leaves can be next year's compost – which is good for the garden soil and the environment. So what should you do?

• Simply allow your leaf pile to weather until spring, then use it as an addition to your existing compost pile. Yes, a pile of leaves may seem unsightly and undesirable, but soon enough it will be buried under snow.
• Thin maple or dogwood leaves will rot into leaf mould in a matter of months, but thicker oak leaves may take two or even three years to fully decompose.

You may think that gardening ends once the cool weather arrives, but if you have any trees on your property, one of the last tasks of the season will be raking up the fall leaves. Save your raking chores for a clear, not-very-windy day, and perhaps you will even enjoy the job.