Ruud Kleinpaste: Autumn leaves are falling down - what can you do with them?

It’s a great time of the year. The leaves tumbling down in wind or rain, even in very cold conditions, tells us it’s going to be winter soon. 

Some leaves are pretty sturdy on the lawn, others blow themselves to the old growing places for plants, flowers, fruits, and seeds. 

What now? Gather them up and put them in the weekly recycle bin? 

There are a few things we can do to make them useful for the garden: 

Collect a heap of these leaves and put them in a compost bin. Mix the leaves with twigs and woody debris, some old food scraps and dog poo. Literally anything that once lived can be composted and turned into next season’s plant food – think N-P-K. 

Get a good depth (four inches or so) that you can scatter over the dormant pants. This will protect the plants during winter, and it will also keep the very cold ice-base away from the hibernating plant. 

Everything is then protected from tricky conditions. If you add some slow-release fertiliser as well, you’ll literally increase the fertility of that patch of your garden. 

But the third one is my favourite: 

Get yourself a big plastic container (where you usually grow some large specimens with plenty of root space). Fill that container up with fallen-down leaves, and as you are filling it up, simply stand on the leaves (and small branches) and smack it into a nice compact layer of leaves. 

Then you turn the bin upside down and you end up with a perfect, compact tower of compressed leaves, ready for spring or next year autumn! 

The spring leaves would be great to keep the developing plants safe, warm, and surrounded by fertiliser. The year-old lot will be dry, light and the very best long-lasting winter cover for the coming months. 

My personal way to go even further is by chucking everything inside a sizeable rubbish bin (at least a meter tall), in which you can really go to town with massive amounts of fallen, dried leaves. 

They will suit soil improvement, great fertility, and easy-to-dry soil conditions. 

Just be careful stepping in and out of such a huge rubbish bin without breaking legs and necks… 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at be Rude.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Climb passes in the garden as autumn leaves continue to fall.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good sir, Yes they do. I am sure they do
the same thing at your place. You use us.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
We've got a plane tree. Yeah, we've got a plane
tree in the in the backyard. And it's just it's
just a symphony of color. It's so beautiful. And actually
our neighbors have planted in their berm like a little
Japanese maple, and so it's still kind of fledgling. It's
probably two meters or three meters high, so it's still
quite small. But my gosh, those leaves are astonishing.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
It is. Now. Well, you know what you do with
those leaves, You recycle them and make the plant that
don't go up and up and up with its colors exactly,
isn't it. So that's really what I know. We've got
a couple of minutes, but that's basically what this is about. Hey,
the weekly recycle bin. I always say, really, do you
use that or do you use your own stuff? Why

(01:06):
don't you put it yourself in the garden? You know,
that's the stuff that I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Mm okay, So how do we do it?

Speaker 3 (01:13):
So? Well? A couple of ways. Collect a huge heap
of leaves if you like, and chuck them in the
compost bin. That is simple. People that don't have a
lot of garden can do that, and it's wonderful and
it's absolutely brilliant. You have to remember that anything that
once lived can be composted. And I leave it at that, okay,
number that number two is what you do is you

(01:36):
can chuck it as an material over as a mulch
over your garden at the moment, so it's say four
inches or so, and that will keep your plants really happy,
especially in the cold places where I am here. Of
course you keep them nice and frost free and all
that nonsense. But it also will give you then the
stuff for next year. That's the number. That's a really

(01:56):
important thing you can do too. Number three, though, is
my favorite. And imagine you go to you get yourself
a nice compost type thing or a plastic container, and
you chuck all these specimens, all that leaves in there,
and you stand on them, you literally keep going, yeah,
got and then you turn them upside down and you

(02:18):
have literally a drying bin that is completely empty of
anything else but the drying bin that will be completely
good for a six months away or twelve months away
and you can use it to Oh that's great. But
the best thing is basically what you can do upside
down with a huge if you're like a bin that

(02:40):
you get, you know, for the rubbish bins, a real
big one. You've got to be careful and you stand
on that literally very high. Yeah, and you've got something
that is a meter and a half high, and that
is the best place for next year, honestly.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Oh yeah, I mean that's that's the key, right, Like
you have to first of all, can we just say
you've got to be super careful. And my old friend
Jason Gunn of course then remember he fell over in
his bin and broke his back like he was standing
in the burd and then fell out. Yes, so very important.
You have to be super safe and don't that's don't

(03:16):
do what Jason did. Fortunately course. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yes, a lucky thing was I never told him that.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Oh god, yes, so you can be blamed. I was
lucky you were pretty clear of any liability. Well, I see,
as I'm obviously a little bit nervous about that, but
you reckon at least a meter high eight, it's got
to be yeah, okay, and then it.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Keeps trying, and then you can spread it out as
a soft, wonderful material, absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
And in spring, like we're leaving it for the time being, right,
you've really got to let it dry out for a
good yeah, probably five.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
You can do it. You can do it in spring,
but you can also do it again in the next autumn.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah true. Okay, Hey, thank you sir, have ever great weekend.
We climb past in the garden for us.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
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