I’ve been thinking about leaves lately; as I rake them into my flower beds, watch them circle in my driveway or tumble down the street.  Daily the number of leaves still attached to branches diminishes, and soon they’ll all be down, aided by the cold winds of November, especially those on Monday past.
Some gardeners look upon leaves as a nuisance, but they’re wrong.  A nuisance isn’t a fabulous source of fungi and bacteria for the soil.  A nuisance doesn’t produce attractive mulch that’s full of nutrients.  And a nuisance doesn’t give you a good excuse to be outside on a crisp, fall day in the garden.
Leaves can help in so many places in your garden, and right now is the time to work with them.  They’re all essentially off the plants now and we haven’t had any snowfall or hard freezes that might make them hard to deal with.

If there are leaves on your lawn, rake them off, or even better run your mower over them.  Left over the winter leaves will form a thick layer that will smother the grass.  I have a mulching mower which chops up the leaves into tiny pieces which disappear into the turf.  A regular mower will work as well; you have to run over the leaves more than once to shred them until they’re fine enough.

If you are taking the leaves off the lawn, consider putting them into your compost.  Layer them in with the occasional blend of kitchen waste, perhaps a scoop of soil and a handful or two of nitrogen or compost accelerator like Rot-it.  At the end of the process you’ll have a substance that is worth its weight in gold, full of nutrients and microbes ready to do great work in your garden soil.
No compost bin?  You can still make the leaves work for you.  Keep them in a large garbage can, or create a portable bin with wire mesh.  Fill the container with leaves, add some moisture and let them sit there over winter. 

By late spring the leaves will be well on their way to becoming extremely useful.
Note, however, that large leaves like maples and sycamores will not break down very quickly unless they are chopped up first.  In fact, they’ll form a layer that will be virtually unchanged next spring because of their size if they’re not cut up first.

Although I do enjoy raking leaves I am a guy, and if there’s an opportunity to use power tools to do a job, I’ll happily take it.  We purchased a leaf blower/vacuum for our garden centre this year and I took it home a week ago to see how it performed in the garden.
Using the vacuum attachments I was able to turn a pile of maple leaves into fantastic mulch in a few minutes, as the leaves were forced through cutting blades and into a shoulder bag.  A chipper/shredder machine would achieve similar results.  This material was perfect for laying into flower beds, where it looks great and will break down nicely over the winter to feed the soil.

I would say that we got great value from our leaves this autumn; the colours were terrific and they lingered on the trees for longer than usual thanks to a lack of heavy frosts and wind.  Now that they’re off the trees it’s time to put them to work for us so we can benefit from them next growing season.