Marco Banks.

Apr 12, If you have trees on your property or have ready access to a supply of leaves in fall, then you can replicate the woodland action and transfer that benefit to your garden.

Look at the help.

In their natural. Leaves are packed with trace minerals that trees draw up from deep in the soil. When added to your garden, leaves feed earthworms and beneficial microbes. They lighten heavy soils and help sandy soils retain moisture. They make an attractive mulch in the flower garden. They're a fabulous source of carbon to balance the nitrogen in your compost pile.

Mow over your leaves once or twice. Smaller pieces bind together better in the beds and break down faster to improve your soil more quickly. Once the leaves have been chopped into many smaller pieces, rake, blow or transfer the shredded leaves directly into your adjacent beds or into a container for redistribution to desired locations.

Apply adding tree leaves to garden soil in fall leaf mulch to cover the surface, ideally about 2″ treegrind.barted Reading Time: 4 mins. Sep 18, If possible, shred your leaves first with a chipper-shredder or mower; the smaller pieces will break down faster.

Spread the chopped leaf mulch over your garden soil. ii) When using oak leaves as mulch it is very important that: (1) The first layer to touch the soil needs to be small particles of FINELY decomposed leaves. (2) The layer above the decomposed layer can be whole leaves – preferred chopped. Not too thick or water will not reach the soil.

b) Hay. Oct 24, Leaf mulch keeps the soil cool while blocking light to weeds, and several vegetables including bulb onions, pumpkins and potatoes have shown higher yields when their root zones are covered with a thick blanket of leaf mulch. Young fruit trees respond well to leaf mulch, too, by showing faster growth and better use of soil nutrients.

As I will discuss below, fall leaves have a high carbon level which slows down their decomposition. If you simply pile up the leaves on their own, without adding extra high nitrogen material, the fungi will slowly decompose the leaves into something called leaf mold. In a year or two this will make a great mulch for the treegrind.barted Reading Time: 4 mins. How to Bury Dried Leaves in Garden Soil.

1. Mow dry leaves with a lawnmower equipped with a bag, or send the leaves through a leaf-mulching device.

Otherwise, rake the leaves into one area of 2. Spread the dry, shredded leaves over the garden. A 3- to 4-inch layer of shredded leaves works well.

Or am I just going to have to keep adding to the surface to build up more depth?

The only time it may be a detriment is if the leaves came from a clearly sick tree, and adding those leaves can sometimes just add the plague to the soil. I have a lilac bush and a ornamental japanese cherry tree that have some disease and I rake up their leaf litter and dump them in a separate place in the woods and don't add it to my compost.