Don’t Waste Those Leaves; Mulching Leaves Can Enrich the Soil

First posted on 10-07-2010

Maybe this fall you don’t have to rake all those fallen leaves from around your home.

“Raking leaves is an autumn ritual and may make the gardener feel productive, but it is not necessarily good for trees and shrubs in the landscape,” said Chris Starbuck, University of Missouri Extension horticulturist.

“If leaves are bagged and carted off, the plant nutrients they contain can’t be cycled back into the soil as they would be in the natural habitats of your landscape plants,” he said.

Leaves contain minerals-especially micronutrients like iron, zinc and copper-in proportion to those found in plant tissue. In short, they are a form of fertilizer.

“From an ecological viewpoint, the best way to deal with leaves in the landscape is to mulch them where they fall and let them decompose to release their minerals to the underlying soil,” Starbuck said. “Even in areas where turf is maintained among the trees, leaves chopped up with a mulching mower can be left to decompose into the turf.”

Soil testing generally reveals that turf routinely treated in this way needs less fertilizer than areas where the leaves are removed, he said.

In some cases, however, leaves may accumulate to a depth that will smother out the turf, even after mulching. When that happens, you can remove some of the leaves and shred them elsewhere with a rotary mower, chip shredder or leaf blower operated in reverse.

You can use shredded leaves directly as mulch around trees and shrubs or you can compost them. Leaves do not compost well by themselves because they contain too little nitrogen and are hard to wet. Mixing in nitrogen and a few scoops of garden soil will increase composting efficiency. You can apply nitrogen in the form of fertilizer, grass clippings, cottonseed hulls or manure.

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