What do you do with your autumn leaves? And why do you do that?

I don’t do anything with my leaves. The guys who mow our lawn come and blow all of the leaves into this big field behind our back yard (the guy who owns the landscaping company owns the field). Then, many of the leaves blow back into my yard. It looks like fall, which I love, so I don’t really mind.

Once the leaves are back in that field, they’re usually in one or two very, very large piles. I set my kids loose on them. They like to climb this one tree and jump down into the leaf piles, bury each other, and have leaf fights. We did this yesterday, and afterward I even had leaf bits in my underwear. :)

I like the idea of mulching the leaves, and if everything I planted didn’t die I might try that. Right now I am using my rabbit’s litter as fertilizer. I won’t know until spring how that works out, but I’m hoping my tomato plants like it.

rott them, and then use them mixed in with compost.

We rake ‘em up and bag ‘em. We’ve got a ton of tall Maple’s here that make a big mess. It (the yard) just looks better that way. All of our neighbors do it, and, if you don’t pick up yours, and they then blow—the neighbors will be highly pissed off.

Thirty bags later and the yard looks lovely. Whatever we don’t pick up, after a good raking or two, we mow the lawn. Nice and clean. We lug the clear leaf bags to the boulevard and the city picks them up.

If they fall onto the garden I dig them into the soil, if they fall on the path I either sweep them onto the garden or put them in the compost bin.

Use some of them as mulch/ground cover for the flower beds. The majority get mulched into the lawn with the lawnmower. The rest dance in the wind, and wind up in my neighbor’s yard.

@jmah My neighbor’s may go ahead and be upset with me. Most of them bag, too or have their yard caretakers haul them away.

Bagging them just seems like such a waste of nature to me. MHO.

Our village does compost the leaves they collect. What does your community do with your bags?

It goes to the city and they compost, as well. They also pick up brush.

It what we’ve always done. Actually, my Dad rakes them onto a large tarp, then lifts the tarp/leaves into the back of his pickup (covers them) and off to the the Compost place he goes. He dumps them there. No need to bag.

The first thing we do since we have many trees in our yard is rake them up into huge piles so we can jump into them. They are then tossed into the woods right behind our house. We also use some for mulch, and if I’m in the mood I may burn a few piles.

My husband mows them. They’re extra protection for the coming winter.

i have very few leaves, what does fall stays around the bushes for mulch

I’m doing a craft with some right now, hehe :)

If we had a freakin’ lawn mower that I could use, I’d just mulch them up. As it is, I’m just going to have to ignore them. Yeah, and sticking them in a plastic bag to be sent to the landfill doesn’t sit right with me….

@Val123 You could start a compost.

My kids and I made leaf rubbings yesterday. It even kept the boys busy for almost an hour!

@MissAusten Oh, I’m going to try that next :)

@RedPowerLady Yeah….It’s just such an eyesore…

We sweep the ones on the front paths into the garden and compost them in place. We gather the ones on the “lawn” (it is more ground cover than actual grass, which drives my very horticulturally conservative son crazy) in the back yard and compost them either in the compost bin or in a square area we plan to turn into a flower garden someday.

The city takes so much from us already, that I refuse to let them have our leaves, too. We grew them and we paid for the fertilizer to grow them plentifully, and I don’t want to give all of that away.

@Val123 Oh but they have so many compost buckets now that make composting easier and less of an eyesore. Especially handy if you have a small yard.

We have 17 mature Maple trees.
Some go on the flower beds for mulch, some go in my compost pile. The majority get raked to the side of the road, and the village guys come along with their big sucker thing and vacuum them up.
They take them to our dump to be composted. The compost is free to all people in the village.
We used to burn them. That had it’s charm, but I think this is a much better way to handle them.
Give them back to the Earth.

What is a compost bucket?
@wilma We have a bunch of Maple trees. They are the most beautiful in fall, but boy, they make the biggest messes! What’s cool about our trees, though, is my then-five-year-old grandson and I planted them from maple seeds we found in the drive way!
Here’s one of them looked like just five years later. Notice it’s braided? :)

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc207/Dutchcat1/100_1499.jpg

They’re even way bigger now, because it’s been 10 years. No store-bought Maple tree would grow that much in five years.

@Val123 I think compost bin would have been a more appropriate term.

Pictures

Essentially it is where you place your compost outdoors. In the bin. It helps control the compost.

Also here is a good article on how to make your own: make compost bin

@Val123 It’s probably a Silver Maple and gets a lot of moisture. Because of the atypical trunk you may have some problems with it down the road. Enjoy it now though, it’s very interesting looking!

@RedPowerLady Thank you! I’m seriously going to look into it! But….how do you get all the leaves (and grass, I assume) to fit? And what do you do with it when it’s composted?

@Val123 If you don’t mind I’ll PM you later with some info. or post it here. My hubby does this for a living. I’m sure he’d love to answer! I’m afraid I’ll tell you the wrong thing as I pretty much let him deal with it.

@RedPowerLady Thank you!

@RedPowerLady Reading through…that is just way cool! I guess my biggest concern is having something large enough to hold all the grass clippings (We have a big corner lot) and the miles and miles of leaves. But I guess it all breaks down. So then you can just use it like fertilizer on the yard and stuff? I got just the place for it!! I look forward to your PM!

I burn them because I’m cruel.
not really. I burn them because I love fire.

I wish I could afford a mower that would mulch them. My cheapo mower barely cuts the grass. We rake the leaves and put the in the “yard waste” trash cans that are provided by the trash company that serves our house.

I tried raking them into the bushes that line my yard, but they started rotting and smelled awful.

@val I PM’d you about how to compost it :)

@troubleinharlem Me too! Fire, not cruelty. =)

Fire is illegal everywhere I’ve been from the mid-Atlantic to New England.

I take my leaves and compost them under our back deck.

Leaves from my Liquid Amber tree remain on the ground for weeks and weeks, I like it that way, the red leaves are gorgeous. I ask the guy who mows the lawn to mow around them. And I pick up a few and bring them inside and place them in a shallow and wide black bowl that sits on a dresser.

Compost. To speed it up you could use organic compost accelerators with active bacteria and fungi.

@daloon It’s not illegal here!

Well, mum and dad always rake ‘em but they end up blowing away. I rlly don’t know why they do that because the wind just messes them all up.