Fall leaves.....What do YOU do with them?

Just for the sake of a new topic.

I compost mine, either rake them up and shread them. Or run the lawn mower with the bag over them.

A lot of people in our town burn them and the whole town is full of smoke, I gag when I have to drive through the smoke clouds. UGH !

I hear ya! Sometimes I wish we had more compost piles just to take all those extra leaves this time of year.

Ahh...fond memories of being a young boy...and throwing leaves on the fire...though I remember it being more of a smoldering smoke pit than a real fire!

In the past I have raked the leaves onto the large beds in my backyard. Ideally I would shred them but it seems like they are always wet in the fall. I moved to a new house this year so we shall see. I have a good-sized maple in the front yard that is starting to change colors.

I had collected leaves curbside to spread out over the veggie garden area. Then I discovered that I could collect already shredded leaves from Fairfax County. I get loads of shredded wood mulch for half of the year and I try to load on the shredded leaf mulch for the other half.

- Brent

Hi! All! I use them for mulch.(I love the woodsy smell) And the ones that are really pretty ~ I use them for fall decorations. You can dip them in wax if you want to keep them a while.:-D

Joey

Joey - how smart are you...what a great idea!!!

I don't do anything - I let DH deal with them and with a stamp sized yard, not need to worry! :)

Hey Chantell ~ I have a bad habit of trying to "save" everything. I like to think of it as "recycling". :-))

The first thing that comes to mind is a million years ago when I was a Brownie/Girl Scout we would take what we thought were the most beautiful leaves and iron the leaf between two sheets of waxed paper. I am not sure of what we then used them for, just remember having fun doing it.

The second thing that comes to mind when speaking of leaves, is how much I hated as a child and teenager having to rake the front yard leaves. I was also taught early to mow the lawn too. Thankfully the lawn was small. I can remember after my divorce many years ago when I was renting a house with a huge yard, as I was mowing, I would be thinking that I would be tempted to marry someone, just to have them mow that place. ha-ha.

One house that we lived in for 7 years, not a lot of raking was needed nor done. The house I live in now, even though surrounded by woods and trees, doesn't have many leaves because the only tree of any size is at side of house and those fallen leaves were left to blow away last year too.

This year I have started a compost pile. I am now trying to think of places to get leaves. Since I have a couple dozen things to do garden wise, before getting up leaves, I haven't given it too much thought yet. I have set a deadline of this weekend for getting in the plants outside that can continue to live inside. There are 4 or 5 more of those. After that I have some more bulbs to plant. ha-ha......have a few already on hand and a very large order through a web site that will be showing up any day.

I have a friend coming on Saturday to help me get my greenhouse/potting shed organized and cleaned out. On my side porch is where I usually ended up doing most of the potting, there is a load of things that need to be carried in for the winter and put away in the shed.

I really have a lot to do it seems, but will do it all gladly because I am loving this gardening stuff so much. I am going to start another thread on "to be done" before winter and see where I am standing. Some of you may already be finished with cleaning up for the year, but I have hardly begun.

Good topic about leaves Chris. Thanks for starting it.

Ruby

Wish I could get my hands on some shredded leaves! Tried to get them from the "city", but because we're just over the line and live in the "county" - not gonna happen. Every fall we travel through the city and try to beat the city trucks to collect the bags of leaves that residents leave curbside and use them to mulch the edges of our beds - about 100 last fall!

Debbie

Debbie, all the counties up here shred leaves and other yard waste and sell the mulch, but at a very low cost. I've avoided using them, though, because you're going to have a certain amount of poison ivy mixed in.

Call your local tree service companies. They'll be happy to bring you dump truckloads of wood chips. Saves them the cost of dumping at the landfill. And contrary to what we've always been told about needing to age those chips, there is no need to do that unless you're going to dig them into plants' rootzones.

Ruby, when my daughter lived in California, in the desert east of LA, she was so homesick for trees and especially fall. So I made her a Virginia fall care package. I collected a bunch of pretty fall leaves and ironed them between wax paper, acorns and bunches of baby Indian corn and sent them to her. She loved the leaves and hung them up on her apartment wall.

at the moment, I'm picking up every single fallen leaf and looking for my keys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( iwas sucha good busy bee Wednesday morning, all over the yard cleaning up, and this is the thanks I get?) I fear they were turned into county mulch...

Would a magnet pick up on them?

Oh, thanks so much for the suggestion, but there really aren't that many leaves out there, and I have scoured the place( half acre yard) I was putting hedge clippings in bins, putting recycle bins out, trimmed a bit of raspberry and added that to a bag, picking up a few yard items,,,,pretty much had gone all over the yard. I always tuck them partway into my jeans pocket, so they may have been pulled out then fell in a bin. I wouldn't be so sick about it, but these are on a new van and they have a microchip in the key and remote for security. Bottm line, about $300 ( yes, $300) at the dealer to get one of each and then get them programmed . Have to look atthe manual and see if there's any alternative to what the dealer does. And still hoping I did one of those really goofy things, that I was so preoccupied that I'll find them some really odd place, like in the freezer!
You better beleive my next keys wil have a big bright lanyard and I will have a lovely necklace effect going on!

Sally did you find your keys?

Here is a picture of the neighbor's oak tree behind my garage. The colors are really pretty. The leaves remain on this tree all winter. Then in the spring they start to fall and the wind blows them over the garage roof and into the garage when we open the doors. The leaf raking never ends.

no keys yet : ( everybody please be careful with those keys! I am glad I wasn't stranded away from home, or locked out of the house, or late for something important, it could have been worse.
No leaf burning here- too suburban. I compost all I can. Steal the neighbors shredded ones, til he got smart. I think I can still steal his pine needles for under blueberries. He gave me a bag of urea fertilizer he scrounged somewhere- that really gets the compost going.

We have a mulching mower with a grass catcher and used the leaves from it as mulch on my seedling beds
:)
A

Hi All - Sally, what is urea fertilizer?

Thanks.

Ruby

I'm curious to know if anyone else avoids mulching with certain trees...I have a Norway maple (just say No way), and I get too many seedlings as it is. I also wonder about the 'allelopathic' effect, how these and some other trees supress germination in other species. I am definitely going to help my neighbors rake up their oak leaves and mulch and compost those! They probably think I'm nuts

Ruby- I thought I had replied but it's not here.. don't know what happened. Urea is a nitrogen source. Urea fertilizer came in a bag with Southern States labels, so I guess you could ask there, but I don't know if it's available to the homeowner. I think second best, if not organic, would be any cheap, non-weed kill lawn fertilizer.
Claypa- I've nevr had norways sprout in my compost, but I do have several trees(urgh) don't know why. I've only heard of black walnut being allelopathic, and sunflower hulls. Mulched oak leaves sound beautiful to me!