7 Ways Smart Gardeners Use Leaves to Nourish their Garden

Most people see fallen autumn leaves as a nuisance to get rid of, but I see them as a literal gift from above to nourish my garden. Today I'm going to show you all the ways to turn this glorious autumnal abundance into something absolutely invaluable. We'll be working to turn leaves into a potting mix ideal for starting off seedlings, using them to make the very best garden compost, feeding the soil and the worms within with lashings of lovely leaves, and even storing roots like these with these. So let's start with my very favorite way to use leaves, and that's to make beautiful leaf mold. Now if you've never made it before, I am genuinely excited for you because this stuff here is some of the very best stuff you can add to your garden, and all that's needed to make it is a little bit of patience. You and your garden are in for an absolute treat! But before we get on and do that, allow me to show you one of the very compelling uses for the leaf mold you make. This here is two-year-old leaf mold, made from leaves that have simply been piled up and left to rot down over time. But don't worry, we've got plenty of uses for leaves that don't take lots of years, but just take a look at this stuff! It is beautiful isn't it? Lovely, soft, dark and crumbly, and let's give it a good old smell. It smells like a woodland floor. This stuff is absolute gardener's gold. Now this stuff here is really rather fabulous because it's quite stable and it's actually fairly low in nutrients, which is exactly what we want for starting off seedlings, and it's brilliant for improving soil health as well. So what I'm going to do with this stuff here is make a seed starting mix, and it's very easy to do, and believe me this is well worth doing because seed starting mix is amongst the most expensive potting mixes you can possibly buy. So look at this, it's beautiful and crumbly already, but I'm just going to pass it through this sieve here just to remove any remaining twiggy bits. There's a few hazelnut shells just to get it even finer and crumblier like that. This stuff can just go back onto the leaf mold pile or compost heap. So that's our leaf mold, now I'm going to mix it with equal parts of something else, and I've got three options for this. Garden compost, well-rotted wood chips, or just horticultural or sharp sand. Use whatever you've got to hand. I've got these well-rotted wood chips here, so I'm going to use those, and as I say, equal parts to our potting mix. Again, pass it through a sieve like this just to remove any kind of lumpy bits. Give it all a good mix to get a nice even spread of both throughout, and that's it really. This can now be used for filling pots, seed trays, and plug trays ready for sowing. So let's get on and make some leaf mold. Now I made this a couple of years ago, and it's my little leaf mold cage in the corner of my garden here in the shade. It works really well, I've simply got four corner posts rammed into the ground, then I've got this old netting here which I've crimped around the edges and folded around to make this sort of box. It's about three foot or a meter wide and deep, and about, well, a couple of feet tall like that. You could use staples to really secure it to the posts. And I tied on this sort of flexible door here like that, so let's close it and then get filling this cage. I actually find that adding your leaves into bulk bags like this makes them a lot easier to drag around the garden rather than just the wheelbarrow. Now I'm just going to fill up my cage here, and the beauty of this cage is it's nice and breathable all the way around, so plenty of air gets in there which is exactly what we need. So just get it all in there and Bob's your uncle, and if it is a bit dry like this what you can do is just give it a bit of a water afterwards to help wet it all. You want it kind of about as wet as a wrung out sponge. One way to get your leaf mold off to a flying start by the way is to make a hole in the middle of it, of your leaves that is, and then introduce some mature leaf mold or compost, especially if it's got lots of worms in it. Or like I'm doing, just start it off in the same place as an old pile. Now the benefit of this is that it will introduce all sorts of composting microorganisms to really give this a real boost. If you don't fancy making a leaf mold cage and you're not that bothered about looks, then you could actually just use a bulk builder's bag like this, bung your leaves in and make your leaf mold in here. Or if you haven't got much space for either a cage or a bag like this, then you can stuff old bags like this, or if you don't like plastic, go for something like hessian or burlap sacks like these, but these are a bit more expensive. If you're using plastic, just bung your leaves in and then spike holes all the way around the edge for that all-important airflow, tie them off at the top and then stuff them somewhere out of the way and leave them for one to two years. Making your own leaf mold isn't a quick job, it does take its time so some patience is required, but after a year you'll have something like this, a little bit rougher with recognizable leaves and bits of twig and so on, but this is absolutely fantastic as a soil conditioner. Just whack it on your beds in the autumn there to work its magic, and then after two years you'll have something like that lovely, beautiful, fine leaf mold we saw, perfect for making your own seed starting mixes and potting mixes. Just about any leaves are fantastic for making leaf mold, but it has to be said that some are a little bit better than others. Now just about any deciduous leaf from a tree or shrub, that's leaves that fall down each autumn, make brilliant leaf mold, but thicker leaves like these horse chestnut here will take a bit longer to kind of break down. There aren't many leaves that are best avoided, but chief among them are black walnut, eucalyptus and then these guys here, leylandii and cherry laurel. As they break down they can release chemicals into the leaf mold which could inhibit growth later on, and on the same token avoid many glossy leaves, thick glossy leaves including the likes of ivy, as well as leaves collected from busy roadsides where there may be dog poo in there or just fumes from traffic. Pine needles aren't ideal, but gathered all up together they do make fantastic pine straw which can be used as a general mulch. The second classic use for leaves is to use them as a mulch to cover bare soil, just simply bung generous piles of autumn leaves over empty beds like this, and this will help to sort of protect them over winter, but crucially as they rot down they will impart lots of lovely organic matter and nutrients into the soil. Now what will happen is that the worms will work on this over winter, kind of dragging the leaves down and helping them to decompose there, along with other all the other soil life as well, and then come spring you'll be left with a beautiful soil. Now that does look quite voluminous doesn't it, but we're going to weigh it down now and over winter it'll slump down nicely. Lovely dried leaves are liable to just blow away with the first gust of wind, so I just use something to weigh them down like these old kind of cucumber cages. You could use a crisscrossing pattern of say bamboo canes as well. You'll find that with the good autumn rains it'll all slump down and kind of knit together and hold in place, but this also stops the birds scattering it willy-nilly. Now then, come spring, when you peel back any leaves that are left you'll have a lovely soft rich soil that's just begging to be sown into and planted, and any leaves that are still around can just be raked aside, gathered up and added to your leaf mold pile or indeed your compost heap. And indeed leaves do make a fantastic addition to the common or garden compost heap. These guys are drier and richer in carbon which makes them perfect for balancing out slightly wetter nitrogen-rich materials like say grass clippings or kitchen scraps. Add your greens and browns in layers and if ever your compost heap does become a soggy smelly mess then a good layer of dried leaves is often all that's needed to fix the problem. And by the way, you can add a compost heap to your garden plan. Do you know what? There's something genuinely wonderful about how nature just does this without fail. Every single year we get all these wonderful leaves falling down at a time when our garden really needs them. It genuinely never gets old, and if you want my opinion there's honestly no time of year to match autumn. That lovely crunch of leaves underfoot, the magnificent autumn colors, even the smell of the air is just all magnificent. Now then, let's look at a few uses for leaves that might be new to you. If you've got carrots, beet roots and parsnips still in the ground you've probably heard that the best way to store them is in boxes of damp sand, especially in areas with really harsh winters where the ground freezes solid for weeks on end. But sand can be tricky to source, it's heavy to lug around and quite frankly it's a little bit messy, so would you believe it? Leaves, dry leaves make a perfect substitute. How handy! Hurrah! And they're free, lying about in your garden, ready to use. So the first job is just to twist off the foliage by hand like that, that can go on the compost heap, and then don't wash the roots but do just brush off any big lumps of soil, but this is fine. Once you've got them all prepped like that, simply add a couple of inches of dried leaves into the bottom of your container like that and then lay your beet roots or carrots or whatever across the bottom in a layer so they are not touching, and once you've got a layer you can add another couple of inches of dried leaves, more roots, more dried leaves and so on until you reach the top. Lovely stuff! Now this lot will be stored somewhere cool, dark and frost free and I'll check on them every now and then and use up any that are going a little bit soft or whatever. Kept like this they will store for at least a couple of months. This same insulating trick works for protecting pots of plants that are only borderline hardy, wait till they pretty much died back and then you can just create some sort of mesh screen to hold the leaves in place like this. Once your screen's in place just add in your leaves. Now these lovely leaves will trap air just like a duvet or comforter and help to buffer against the extremes of cold. Feed it right the way around the top and try and get some leaves around the side as well, and you can actually use the same trick by banking leaves against a cold frame or even the side of a small greenhouse to help trap a bit more valuable heat. Just make sure to remove it in spring before everything turns into a kind of sloppy mess and you get slugs under there. Now here's one that is close to my heart. A loose pile of leaves can become a lifeline for all sorts of garden creatures over winter. Ladybugs or ladybirds clustered together in the leaf litter to ride out the cold, ready to emerge in spring to tackle those nigglesome aphids. Queen bumblebees often burrow just beneath the leafy cover for warmth. Moths and butterflies of all sorts often overwinter as caterpillars or even as adults tucked away within curled up leaves, and then there are larger visitors like hedgehogs, frogs and toads which will happily use a leaf pile to either hibernate or just get away from the frosts. And have a little look over here at the natural leaf litter of my bamboo. I don't know if you can see them but the wasps are coming in and out. This is a fantastic home for these garden allies which help with pollination and also pest control, though I won't be getting any closer than this because I don't want to get stung. So unlike a leaf mold cage we don't want to be too tidy, we just want to keep the leaves loose and just bank them up away into an out-of-the-way corner. Somewhere like this under the kind of shelter of a hedge is absolutely perfect because it'll stay a little bit drier as well which will be really appreciated. And that's it really, just leave this here till spring, don't disturb it, and well it'll do such a big difference, so valuable for the other creatures that call your garden home. And now for the easiest use of the lot. If you've only got a light scattering of the leaves then just leave them where they are, there's actually no need to rake them up at all, so you can I just leave them where they are, however what I do do with lots of these leaves on the lawn is just run a lawn mower over them and that breaks them up into smaller fragments which then bed down into the leaves of the lawn a bit easier so they break down a bit quicker. I should add that you need the collection bag removed from the lawn mower so that as the leaves are chewed up and spat back they go back onto the lawn, and only do this for light scatterings of leaves. If you try and mow over a thick pile you could risk damaging your lawn mower or worse still chewing up any insects and other creatures that have already bedded down into the leaves for winter. Save it for light scatterings like this. And here we go, there are those awesome leaves nicely chewed up and they're going to rot down into the lawn beautifully. Now incidentally I never collect any of my leaves or grass clippings from my lawn and remove them other than to maybe mulch some of my beds. Instead I'm going to let this just rot down and the upshot of that is that the soil under here is so much richer it encourages a deeper root system in my lawn plants which means that when we get these hot dry summers the grass here stays greener for longer compared to lawns that are closely cropped with all the clippings removed. When you come to think of it it's really rather wonderful that something this beautiful can also be so useful. Leaf mold for your soil and potting mixes, leaves to nourish your beds over winter, a home for wildlife, somewhere to tuck in your tender plants and even somewhere to keep your root crops nice and cozy over winter. All of it free, all of it just waiting to be raked up. Let me know in the comments below how you plan to use this fabulous autumn gift, or if you've got a leaf trick of your own that I haven't mentioned, please do share it. Now then, if you haven't tried our garden planner now is the time to do so, especially as ideas for next growing season start coming thick and fast. Just head on over here to give it a try for free using our seven-day trial. I'll catch you next time.