Your Land & Water for October 2025
- jhansen49
- 42 minutes ago
- 4 min read
What's in this issue? As the season changes over to fall many people will have yards full of old leaves that have recently left their trees. We encourage you to not get rid of them but instead use them to help create habitat for a wide variety of organisms!
LEAVE THOSE LEAVES
by Suzanne McCarthy
Does the thought of cleaning up your yard this fall leave you with a sense of dread? You really don’t need to do all that work – raking all your leaves. It’s actually better to leave them on the ground. They add nutrients to the soil, provide habitat for many pollinating insects, serve as insulation to roots, and are wintering locations for queen bumblebees, toads, and pupae of many insects including several butterflies and moths.
Unless you have an overabundance of leaves (6 inches or more), use your mower to shred the leaves into smaller pieces that you leave on the lawn. There they will help fertilize your lawn! Whole leaves in planting beds are not a problem, although you don’t want them so deep that they smother the plants below them.
You also don’t want leaves or mulch up against the trunks of trees or stems of shrubs, where they create a moist environment that can lead to rot and disease and can be a hiding place for voles that feed on the bark.
Other good advice for winterizing your garden is outlined very succinctly in the short article by Brooke Bivona, “A Messy Garden is a Happy Garden,” found on the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University website (efm.org/learn/winterize-your-garden-nj). As they emphasize there, hold off on cutting perennial seedheads and hollow stems, create brush piles, leave some bare ground, and provide food and water. Also, avoid using pesticides except for natural pest control methods. The chemicals will stay on your leaves and can harm beneficial insects even in winter.
The Edelman Fossil Park & Museum article also refers the reader to another source of information: the Xerces Society’s Bring Back the Pollinators campaign, which is a wonderful set of directions on how to create nesting and overwintering habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects. Those insects are, in turn, essential food for birds in your neighborhood to raise their young when spring arrives. See https://xerces.org/sites/default/files/publications/18-014.pdf for details on insect nesting habits, plants they use in winter, and many other helpful tips.
Above all, plant native plants. They are the basis of an ecologically sustainable garden and critical for native insects and birds to thrive.
Composting many of your leaves is a perfect way to utilize them and generate material to enrich your soil. Here’s a recipe for compost from Lorraine Kiefer of Triple Oaks Nursery in Franklinville:
Compost recipe
-4 parts brown ingredients (dry leaves, dry grass from mowing lawns, shredded newspaper, wood chips, straw)
-1-part green material (fresh grass clippings, weeds, trimmings and kitchen scraps [except meat], barnyard manure)
-Water when dry
-Air for oxygen (turn pile to aerate)
These are just suggested amounts. We have never, ever followed this rigidly; we just dump what is available and hope for the best. Our chickens run free all day, often aerating the pile, but when they roost in the coop at night, they provide us with piles of droppings that really aid in the compost process. If your compost just sits, add some manure and be sure to turn the materials and water. Smaller piles are easier to manage for most gardeners, so start a couple if you have lots of leaves and other materials. Sometimes we dump the debris right inside our fenced-in garden over the winter. My husband Ted often runs over the leaves with the mower before he puts them in the garden. Sometimes he tills them lightly in early spring and adds some more manure. This works in our very sandy soil, breaking down very quickly, but we are very careful not to till too often or too deep as over the years this has made the sand come up to the surface and we have lost some of the compost. It is best to try to simulate the process found in the woods: layers of organic on top the soil, yielding a cooler, moist soil under the surface. Being short of time and always a bit rushed, I find that making the piles in the gardens works well for me. Sometimes we just leave the chopped leaves in the large shady beds of shrubs and wildflowers that surround the property. This keeps weeds down and moisture in.
Easiest of all compost
My students often tell me that they successfully follow this suggestion to make a small ring of chicken wire or hardware cloth in various beds in even the smallest of gardens. An easy method, it encourages you to throw the weeds, leaves and other garden debris in these rings that are right in or near the garden. The piles will get used when they are ready by just removing the wire and spreading them around. It is an effortless way to dispose of weeds and leaves and enriches the soil. Stir or turn the materials with a pitchfork every so often if you can. It will still work if you do not. So, remember, as the leaves fall, use all of them, plus grass clippings, kitchen scraps, and any other organic materials that you can manage to get to the compost pile. Come spring you'll be glad you did!
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