Can raking leaves become a spiritual practice? In a season where pagans watch their gardens fade, we can retain a sense of the renewal of life by laying in supplies for spring. One such supply is leaf mold, the rich brown decay one finds in forests, under many years’ falls of leaves.
Making it shows us the resilience of life, and it adds a garden-practice to our work in the shortest days of the year.
Though the following column will recommend a number of polluting machines, begin by ridding thyself of that shrieking abomination, the leaf-blower. Small engines on these machines, especially two-stroke versions, produce far more pollutants per hour than a light-duty vehicle engine (Steinberg 168-69).
Raking leaves provides great cardiovascular exercise, and it makes us slow down and take note of the season we are in. This is a key precept to my philosophy of sacred gardening. If an engine is to be used, try my method: using a side-discharge lawn mower (with a much cleaner engine that most blowers) to chop and pile the leaves for making leaf-mold. I’ve tried a bagging mower, but mower-bags are tiny. It’s easier to direct the discharge of chopped leaves to a central pile where they can be raked onto a tarp and dragged to the composting site.
Unlike a blower, a mower will begin the key process of breaking leaves down. In fact, thick leaves like those on my magnolia must be chopped or they stay around for years. Of course, even chopped they don’t hold a candle to oak leaves for making the best soil amendment there is, after organic compost.
As the leaves get piled up in a sunny spot in the corner of the garden, I wet each layer down with the hose (a good way to drain my rain barrels, incidentally) before piling on more chopped leaves. Our country garden can hold a huge pile, and this year I’m experimenting with driving some fallen branches deep into the pile to channel in rain water. That may help keep the interior from drying out, which would stop the processes essential to making compost or leaf-mold.
Last year, I found that oak leaves put through a tractor-pulled vacuum–I wore ear protection!–came out of the trailer in tiny bits, and they made rich leaf-mold for the vegetable garden after only one winter. Three Ts: time, temperature, and turning will help. I’ve gotten a bit of advice to add fireplace ash or fertilizer to the pile to kick-start activity in late winter and balance the pile’s PH.
I hope this all works out..I’ll be turning the pile in late February or early March with a small tiller but I’ll peer in earlier, to see if I’m getting any brown gold.
Further Reading:
“Making Leaf Mold” at the Fine Gardening Web Site.
Steinberg, Ted. American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn. New York: Norton, 2006.
