Leaf mulch - One season later
Last fall, I
raked leaves out of the woods to cover nearly all of my vegetable
garden beds.
My hope was that the leaves would keep weeds from growing over the
winter, expedite spring planting, and also rot down to fertilize the
soil.
Those leaves seem to
have done their weed-killing job admirably. The photo above is a
bed which didn't end up getting mulched --- it's now completely covered
with dead-nettles and chickweed. The bed below was mulched ---
notice the bare soil where I raked the leaves back to give me a spot to
plant poppies. The soil under the leaves was also unfrozen and I
glimpsed a spider scurrying around, which is in stark contrast to the
lifeless permafrost atop the un-mulched bed.
I was a bit disappointed
to see that the leaves hadn't decomposed much at all, but in a way
that's a good thing. We'll add manure before planting to boost
the fertility of the soil, and will push leaves back around plants once
they come up to keep the weeds at bay. I can already feel the
year's weeding being cut in half.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hi, We have been raking leaves on our garden for years and in the spring as I go to plant I rake the leave and compost them - figure I'll add the completed compost later. Seems to work well - more work though.