Leaves As Garden Fertilizer

            Leaves grow on the trees, leaves fall from the trees; with each autumn they add depth to their numbers. Peel back these yearly layers and you will find worms; go deeper and you start to see the leaves don’t look much like leaves anymore. Go deeper still and it looks like dirt.

            Nature’s compost pile, little by little producing a mineral rich top soil designed to feed the plants and trees around them with what once hung above them.

            But that’s not all there is to the story. A giant loop is represented in those leaves around your feet. The leaves you see have within them minerals placed there by the roots of the tree. Those minerals removed by the roots, and brought to the surface, are being replaced by the composting of the leaves that have fallen many many years ago. For over the centuries and millenniums leaves have been growing and leaves have been falling. 

            What does this have to do with you?

            Well, you’ve got a garden, and you’ll soon have a rake in your hand. You have a body that needs minerals: and you’ve got a tree full of leaves that have been nourished with what the roots have been sending them all season long. So, instead of bagging them up and sending them all off to the landfill, why not put some of them on your garden; about 4 to 6 inches should do it.

            They should be tilled in right away so the decomposing process can be well underway before planting season next year. And when you till up the soil next spring for planting you may need to add a little nitrogen to finish up the rotting process, for decomposing locks up the nitrogen until it is complete.

            I tell ya, who needs a “One a day” when you have a tree in your backyard.

If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me at NiemeyerLandscaping@Gmail.com or post a comment on this Blog. Like us on Facebook at Niemeyer Landscaping.