The leaves are starting to fall and so it’s time to talk about what to do with all those leaves. Granted, we love our trees, but dealing with the leaves can sometimes be over-whelming and I say this as someone with over 50 large oak trees in our yard. When we first moved into this house 20 years ago, I did what most homeowners do and spent every weekend out in the yard blowing and bagging leaves to be hauled away. However, at some point I found a better way that’s not only more eco-friendly but much, much less time consuming, giving me more time to do the things I enjoy about fall rather than investing so much time into the tedious task of raking and bagging leaves.

The first thing you need to know is that leaves contain about 1% nitrogen which is the same nitrogen content of composted manure. While many of us will purchase bags of composted manure for our gardens, we have a free organic source of nutrients falling from the sky. Yes, manure contains more than just nitrogen, but that’s still no reason to pack up and ship off a perfectly good source of very locally sourced nitrogen found in our fallen leaves.

In addition to nitrogen, leaves also contain potassium, phosphorus, calcium, sulfur, magnesium, boron, manganese, iron, chloride, copper, sodium, and zinc. If that isn’t enough, since leaves are organic matter, as they de-compose they also add organic matter back into your soil. In Oklahoma, we have fairly low natural organic matter content in our soil so anything we can do to help increase the organic matter content of our soil is a good thing.

If you are wondering, what do I need to do to take advantage of the organic nutrients in the leaves falling from my trees, all you need to do is stop bagging them and hauling them off. Instead, just mow your yard with a mulching mower like you do every time you mow. This process will chop the leaves up into small pieces making them essential disappear and become part of your soil. From personal experience, this process will only add 2, maybe 3 more mowings for the year. In my book that is a more than fair trade.

That takes care of the leaves in your yard, but what about the leaves that fall in your flower beds or vegetable garden. In those instances, I would encourage you to leave those leaves in place until spring. Here’s why.

We now know that leaves provide a natural space where a variety of insects like to over-winter. Some of the insects that do this would include moths, butterflies, snails, spiders, and a variety of arthropods. Since monarch butterflies get a lot of press for their migration, it’s easy to assume that most butterflies migrate, but this simply isn’t the case. In reality, most butterflies overwinter in the fallen leaves as either, eggs, caterpillars, chrysalis’, or even adults. So, leaving the leaves in the fall helps encourage development of a fairly large quantity of insects.

Native bees are also known to overwinter in leaf debris. For example, a mated queen can burrow into the earth to a depth of about 1 to 2 inches to hibernate for the winter. A layer of leaves on top of this burrow provides protection against the elements thus encouraging her survival.

Now, what about those leaves that fall onto the driveway, the deck, or along the curb_? Those can also be used in a variety of ways in your garden.

If you are happy with just one fall leaf strategy, you can use your leaf blower to blow the leaves from those areas into your yard and then just mow them like the rest. This works. I have done this in year’s past and was happy with how easy this process was.

Or you can run those leaves through a mulcher, place them in bags, and store them over the winter in the corner of the yard. Then in the spring when your neighbors are heading off to the garden center to purchase bags of garden mulch, you can just go grab some of your bagged leaf mulch and use that in your garden. I have done this for several years and it works great.

There are a couple of ways you can mulch these leaves. First you can put them in a pile and the use your mower to chop them up. Or, there are leaf munchers that are commercially available to make this process a little easier. Yes, there’s a slight investment needed for one of the mulchers, but they tend to come with a way to hold the bag right under the mulcher so it makes the whole process pretty painless. Try not to look smug in the neighborhood as your neighbors are unloading their newly purchased mulch in the spring. It’s not a good look.

Speaking of something that some of you will not consider a good look, it’s also a good idea to resist cutting your annual and perennial flowers to the ground in the fall since there are a variety of insects that overwinter in the stems of these plants. Your flower beds may not look all pristine as your neighbor’s gardens do during the winter, but as your reward, you’ll be helping out our pollinator insect population and without them we lose most of our food sources. Sounds like a fair trade. See you in the garden!

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo: Tom Ingram