Most of our neighbors herd their fallen leaves toward the curb for pickup by the village. What they treat as trash, however, we convert into natural fertilizer.
Moving from disposal to harvest is a bit time-consuming but not at all difficult. We're fortunate to live where our lawn-care routine isn't governed by a homeowner's association, so we can do pretty much what we want.
Yesterday morning, for example, I used an electric blower to create an enormous leafpile in the middle of the front lawn. Snapping a vacuum snout onto the blower, I hoovered the pile into the bagger attachment and deposited the processed leaves into a wheeled cart, hauling five loads back to our garden plot.Ninety minutes later the pile was gone and the garden sat two feet deep in fluffy fertilizer-to-be. I added some to our compost bin, too, just for good measure.
(I'm always amazed, by the way, at how effective a blower-vac is at condensing a mountain of litter. Yesterday, because it's been fairly dry here lately and the leaves crumbled easily, my Black & Decker reduced the volume of the pile by about 80%, maybe more.)
Meanwhile, the younger spawn piloted our walk-behind mower, mulching a thick layer of oak and catalpa leaves into the lawn out back. When he finished, the leaves had all but vanished, propelled down to soil level where they'll do the most good.The key to taking full organic advantage of fallen leaves is reducing them to small pieces, postage stamp-sized flakes that'll decompose easily over the damp winter months. Whole leaves take much longer to break down -- simply heaping them onto the garden or letting them sit on the lawn is equivalent to deploying a water-repellent tarp.
One more pass with the mower-mulcher, probably after Thanksgiving, should do it for this season. Come springtime we'll till the rich organic matter into the garden and mow a healthier lawn -- and, other than a cup of gasoline for the mower and the juice to run the blower, it didn't cost us a penny.
