define leaf mold???

large whole leaves can mat .. creating an anaerobic mat .. meaning water and AIR cant move freely thru it.. leading to potential rot ...

so i used to take all the leaves to the street.. and mow them down to about the size of a fingernail ... and that stuff.. later in the fall ... i would put on the beds up to 6 inches deep ... because by spring it was 3 inches.. and by august all gone ...

the benefits to soil development.. and a good mulch to keep them dormant VASTLY outweigh the slug issue ...

why bag it all and send it to the dump??/

i think particle size is the important part ...

ken

let me clarify ....

on the general bed ... i would go up to 6 inches ... [and this was before i started using a hardwood mulch .. dont want to bury that ....]

over the plant directly.. no more than an inch or two.. and i would probably pull that back at pip extension in spring ... dont want to end up burying then to deep

and though i processed it all fall long .. it was not applied until just prior to ground freeze ... we want them to go completely dormant.. and then put a blanket of mulch over them.. to keep them dormant ...

we do not want to cover them too soon and retard full deep dormancy ...

give me another hour... and i will probably correct myself again.. lol

ken

That's good info to know, Ken! I use chopped leaves as mulch, too, but never thought of covering the plant completely, and didn't know I should wait till just prior to ground freeze. If you don't change your mind again, I may just take your advice....
Karen

Two main reasons for letting the ground freeze first are the dormancy Ken mentioned as well as allowing critters to find a winter home before you provide one right next to a food source.

tj

I have a compost pile in the yard, I use the NEW DIRT in a plant box for our tomatoes and a small area of Asparagus I recently started.

this year I took out the last of the compost, put it in a tupperware tub, every time I add leaves to the compost, I throw a couple hands full of old compost on the top, to get it going faster. Turning it now and then really does make it go ! I have also been throwing in a bucket of shredded paper now and then. it disappears quickly as well.

In the past I have left up to 8 inches of leaves on the east side of my house over the Hosta. These are my most established common ones.. I have had good luck so far.

A couple of years ago while trying to figure out how to keep markers by my hosta (my idea where they should come up in spring NEVER was the same as where they really are) I was mentally multi-tasking. My winter mess of wire tomato cages was on my mind also. If you stack them they are difficult to seperate in spring.

I came up with the idea of inverting a cage(tine side up) over each fading hosta and using fabric pins to hold it in place. Then instead of leaving a thick pile of leaves over the entire bed, once the ground was frozen I piled leaves a couple of feet deep inside the cages, which held the leaves in place. By spring they had broken down to about 6-8 inches of mulch and I knew where the hosta were. In the past I always raked tags away when cleaning up in spring.

It worked, but did little to enhance the general soil in the bed. I now have each hosta marked with a rock/tag from the river that can't be raked away. Winter mulching really does help a hosta bed, but during the growing season my soil has been bare. I use a shuffle hoe to control new weed seedlings (which is probably why I never noticed hosta seedlings). I have had few slugs in the past but would like to try the shredded leaf-mold. I thought I had to let it break down over the winter and spread it in spring, so ken, you advice is very timely.

Now I can use my compost bin as it is designed for, using just enough leaf shreds to generate and nice quantity of compost.

Les

For the last few years, I've been chopping the leaves into a fine mulch... fingernail or smaller, per Ken's suggestion.

I don't use it directly on my existing beds cuz I don't like the look of it and I don't want to take the time to pull back the cypress mulch.

I do, however, put it on all the new beds. I kill the grass first, with RoundUp, then put as thick a layer of ground leaves as I can. This year, I have yet to ground up the leaves, but will probably do it by the weekend.

Bonus.... we have an empty rental property and there are more leaves on THAT lawn than on mine! I just have to get them home!