Now is the time for the fall ritual of collecting dead leaves. Why not use this wonderful, completely free natural resource instead of throwing it away or burning it?
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Any good gardener knows that dead leaves are one of the most useful organic materials. If you don’t collect them, other people living in your neighborhood will probably be happy to dispose of your leaf bags for home compost.
It is also possible that in your municipality there is a collection of dead leaves and other organic residues in order to take them to a place where they will be composted.
However, the industrial processing of leaves and other organic residues is expensive and can have some negative effects on the environment. For example, the construction of a new biomethanation center in the Quebec City area cost $216 million. Add to that the costs associated with the collection and handling of organic materials, as well as the management and maintenance costs of this plant, and it costs more than $250 per ton to turn green waste into methane!
This means that some of the dead leaves and other decaying waste produced by the citizens of certain Quebec municipalities is not turned into compost, but into methane! With this technology, we are dealing with methane – a strong greenhouse gas that is sent to the Énergir grid or sometimes simply burned by flaring – and sludge once the organic materials have been methanized. Thus, there is still waste after methanation, unlike composting, which allows complete recycling of organic residues.
Despite the high cost and limited positive impact on the environment, composting and biomethanation plants still have some utility, as the owners or managers of individual food markets, each hospital or each building to accommodation cannot run their own composting center.
Regardless, home composting remains the cheapest and least polluting method for recycling dead leaves and other organic matter. Even better, self-composting is another possible solution that requires no effort, pollutes very little, and costs absolutely nothing!
Self-composting, simple and cheap
Dead leaves that fall from trees in autumn are especially useful for forest soil and plants. The following summer, they decompose and turn into humus, a dark brown clay that is essential for soil stability and fertility. If all the dead leaves were removed – smurfs or elves! –, this would have disastrous consequences for the forests.
Once converted to humus, dead leaves left in place in the garden greatly improve the aeration and drainage of heavy clay-rich soils and increase the water and nutrient holding capacity of light sand-rich soils. Humus is also a premium fertilizer because it can provide almost all of the nitrogen and sulfur, as well as almost a third of the phosphorus that plants need, plus significant amounts of other nutrients necessary for their growth.
Self-composting is a technique directly inspired by nature, which consists of leaving dead leaves on the ground in the garden once autumn arrives. A layer of leaves about 20 cm thick protects the plants from the cold. In addition, the following spring, these dead leaves make an excellent mulch for beds, prevent the growth of many unwanted weeds and allow more moisture to be retained in the soil during dry periods.
Note that self-composting of dead leaves works best in beds where the soil is not yet covered with bark mulch. In addition, it is desirable that the plants planted in the beds where self-composting is practiced are not too far from each other. As in nature, it is more beneficial for the foliage of plants to touch each other, which reduces the amount of sunlight on the ground and consequently the germination of unwanted weeds.
Contrary to popular belief, dead leaves accumulated on the soil of flower beds do not prevent the growth of stems and leaves of perennial and bulbous plants. Although not absolutely necessary, you can tear the dead leaves before placing them in the beds for aesthetic reasons. It is quite simple using a mower equipped with a bag or with a nozzle aimed at the beds.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GUEPE
PHOTO COURTESY OF ILLINOIS FARM BUREAU
