Me too! I'll be watching for answers...

My gut instinct on this is that if you till very many into the soil, you may have some trouble. They won't break down that quickly.

Personally, I would use them as mulch, on top of the soil, and on top of some cardboard or layered paper. Even if you have to push them to one side at planting time. They will begin breaking down and won't harm the balance of your soil. Another option might be to pile them up and let them start to break down, using them for mulch later.

That's just my take on this. Dawn will probably have more data to share. But I suspect she's either at a fire or crashed, trying to catch up on some lost sleep.

George

I'll be watching this thread too! Our weather has been nice enough the work outside and I need to work on some beds.

George,

What if I first shred them up a good bit, or run the mower over them the way Dawn has talked about in the past?

Charles

Oak leaves (in particular) are kinda waxy and decay resistant. I normally would assume 1 to 1.5 yrs for the breakdown.

Good Morning, Y'all! First I have to say just how well George knows me! (grin) However, after having multiple fires last week, including multiple fire calls on a couple of different days, this week is off to a great start with us only being paged for one minor fire yesterday, and our VFD's response was cancelled before the firefighters left the station. I hope and pray this is a sign about how this week will go because last week was miserable. We need time for our exhausted firefighters to recover.

Charles, My answer would be the same as George's, particularly if your native soil currently is low in organic matter and low in biological activity. When native soil is low in organic matter and there is little biological activity, your soil generally lacks the soil-dwelling microbes needed to break down the leaves in any sort of fast or quick method. So, the leaves will just sit there for a while. Maybe 6-8 months or more with little decomposition. Sorry. I'd rather tell you the truth than paint a pretty picture that's not true. I do not know how much nitrogen the leaves would tie up or consume because I know nothing about your native soil, how much nitrogen it contains or how many microbes currently exist in it. This is a really complicated topic. I'll give you an example from my early days here though, and I'll tell you have I've done this over almost two decades.

We always composted everything and added the compost, plus purchased amendments to our soil after we first moved here, since organic matter in the soil was nonexistent in the beginning and we didn't have many, if any, soil microbes. I composted huge piles of stuff like a crazy woman and spent days rototilling it into the soil. Once, just to see what would happen, I buried a whole, perfectly intact oak leaf about 4-6" below the soil surface to see what would happen. A year later, that leaf was still there and had not decomposed at all. Six months later, it was still there. After the leaf had been there in the poor soil for two years without decomposing, I pulled it out of the ground and threw it on a compost pile. This was during one extremely dry year followed by one extremely wet year in poor clay that was just in the process of being amended each year to improve it. That soil is great now, but back then, it was not. One thing I learned from that was that intact leaves decompose slowly, and also that I'd never get my soil improved at that rate because I'd never be able to create enough compost in a timely fashion. So, off I went into the woodland.....

I 'stole' all the leaf mold (partially decomposed leaves and forest floor litter) I could haul out of the woodland (one wheelbarrow load at a time and working in dense, overgrown woodland filled with greenbrier and underbrush so that movement of any kind was hard) and up the hill to the high ground where the garden sits. I did it all winter, every winter, for quite a few years. Then I heaped all that leaf mold on top of the ground in the garden and let it sit until planting time. The leaf mold was basically just partially (sometimes even mostly) decomposed leaves with some small twigs and similar forest debris mixed in. The great thing about using this stuff scooped up off the woodland floor was that there was a lot of biological activity in the materials as they were full of microbes and my soil improved vastly from that point. For a few years, I rototilled that leaf mold/forest debris into the ground to get it as deeply into the clay as possible. I knew I had to cut my reliance on my Mantis soil cultivator at some point and stop the rototilling because of the way it messes up soil structure, so after about 10 years of rototilling stuff into the soil each winter, I just started piling the leaves on top of the beds and the pathways as mulch, where they did and still do decompose in place. I did chop them/shred them either with a mulching mower, riding mower (with a big grasscatcher) or with my leaf vac. Doing this first makes all the difference in the world. I'd never work oak leaves straight into the soil because the tannic acid they contain keeps them from breaking down quickly.

Somewhere along the way, maybe after we'd been here 5 years and I had realized I could not steal leaf mold from the woodland forever (after all, the woodland soil needs to be able to feed and renew itself too), I started gathering autumn leaves instead of leaf mold. I chopped/shredded them and made huge compost piles. The next thing is key to quick success with this. To make the chopped and shredded leaves break down quickly, I mowed the lawn two or three times a week (we overseeded it with annual rye grass every autumn) and added the fresh, nitrogen-rich grass clippings to the compost piles. I was constantly adding new layers to the compost pile. Chop up leaves, spread them on the pile. Mow the rye grass, catching the clippings in the grass catcher, spread a layer of them on top of the leaves....over and over, throughout the autumn, winter and early spring. I tried to alternate thicker layers of brown chopped leaves with thinner layers of fresh grass clippings. Because we tend to stay pretty warm down here in southern OK in winter, the pile stayed hot and decomposed amazingly quickly. Before planting time even would arrive, I'd already have tons and tons of compost to haul into the garden. Sounds great. works great. However, I'm not getting any younger. I was 39 when we moved here and turned 57 last year, so hauling stuff by the wheelbarrow load isn't as easy as it once was. I get tired more quickly, that's for sure.

Since the soil had gotten into really good shape, I started skipping the compost pile step (which meant I could largely stop hauling compost into the garden from big piles outside the garden) and just piled layers of autumn leaves mixed with grass clippings onto all the garden beds and pathways as time allowed in winter. I don't wet them or turn them like a standard compost pile. I pile them on and let them decompose in place at their own rate. When it is time to plant, I just rake back the mulch, as needed, to sow seeds or transplant plants and then pat it back down into place. As it decomposes in place, the nutrients and the compost itself works its way down into the soil in multiple ways....through digging done by the gardener, though the tunneling of earthworms and other soil-dwelling creatures, through the natural action of raindrops hitting the surface and washing into the soil and (ha ha) even through the tunneling activity of the voles that I hate so much. I also turn our chickens loose in the garden in the winter and let them dig and scratch around as much as they want and they turn the soil over really well. Pigs do the same thing, but in a more destructive way (and we don't have pigs ourselves), so I settle for the chickens plowing their way through the garden mixing in my decomposing mulch with the soil, and leaving their own little nitrogen deposits there as well.

I don't know what you will find works best for you, but the methods described above are what has worked best for me.

I have taken things to a new level with some of the newer beds, and have used a modified form of hugelkultur to add big, half-rotted tree limbs and tree limbs under the soil in new beds. As these materials break down, they improve the soil quickly. There are some drawbacks and, for me, living near the river and having heavily forested land, the main drawback is that hugelkultur beds attract rodents and snakes who like to live in them. Because we have so many timber rattlers and copperheads near and around the garden, I have to be really careful to get my hugelkulture ingredients completely buried underground with none of it showed above ground or accessible above ground. To some degree, this helps keep the rodents and snakes out of the hugelkultur beds, but not 100% because the voles will tunnel and then the snakes will go after the voles.

I had a new "garden hazard" develop in the fenced front garden during the rainy years of 2015-2016, and this has nothing to do with the oak leaves, leaf mold or grass clippings or compost or anything, but it does relate to how attractive great soil becomes to all kinds of critters. Because the huge, record-setting rainfall in 2015 left our soil incredibly wet and soggy, crawdads moved into the garden, which I didn't really mind. Guess what followed them? Graham's Crayfish Snakes, that's what. After thinking I had seen it all in my garden, suddenly I had a new kind of snake in there, scaring me (only because I just do not like snakes....it isn't like they are venomous or anything), and eating my crawdads. The crawdads and snakes are merely a sign of what has happened with the soil in our garden----it has been restored, is biologically healthy and that makes it attractive to living creatures of all kinds. When your soil reaches the point that seemingly every living creature on your property wants to move into that soil and live there, you'll know you have accomplished your mission of creating great soil.

I cannot and will not tell you what to do. You have to find your own path. All I can say is that the one thing that made the biggest difference to our soil was to add organic matter (any and every bit of whatever I could find) to it, year in and year out. You never ever get to a point where the soil is done and you stop adding organic matter, but after a while you get to the point that you can add it from the top down and pretty much become no-till. My methods evolved over time. My garden has been one big, on-going science experiment aimed at fixing the soil and growing a great garden and doing it in the way that will hurt the ecosystem the least.

If I wanted to add leaves now for Spring planting, I'd add a nitrogen source mixed in with them and I'd chop them up as small as I can get them. (Our mulching mower blade turns them into tiny pieces.) Your nitrogen source is your choice---if you have any healthy (i.e. not contaminated with herbicide residue) animal manure available, it is a great nitrogen source. So is alfalfa meal or alfalfa cubes. Or rye grass clippings. Use what you have, can find or can scrounge up. Put it on top of the soil if you want or work it into the soil, but if you work it into the soil, be prepared to use supplemental fertilization to make up for any nutrients tied up by the decomposition of the materials you've added to the soil. Don't expect massive improvement in one year. Just keep working on the soil and it will get better and better every year. One year you'll be digging potatoes or onions or something and you'll realize the soil you have then is not at all the same soil you started with. At that point, take a break, pat yourself on the back and sit there for a few minutes and soak up the joy of knowing you've turned crappy old dirt into rich, healthy soil teeming with microbes. Then, keep on keeping on because our hot climate eats up humus/compost/leaf mold at an astonishing rate. In fact, one reason you eventually go no-till even if you didn't start out no-till is because every time you plow or till the soil, you expose your organic matter to oxygen that helps eat it up more quickly. So, in one sense, going no-till allows your compost, humus and leaf mold to feed the soil more effectively and longer because it will break down a little more slowly.

I'll never stop piling chopped or shredded leaves on top of my garden beds and pathways. I'll never stop adding grass clippings. This method works best if I add new layers constantly year round and let them decompose in place. If I stop, the soil will revert back to the dense red clay we had in the beginning, and I'm determined that I will not let that happen.

Sorry this is so long, but I am very passionate about soil improvement. You cannot go to any bulk supplier and buy a mix of soil, humus and compost that will come close to being the kind of soil you develop slowly over time by enriching your native soil with organic matter. You cannot turn crappy dirt into rich, biologically active soil in one year, but you can and will do it over time. It is important to feed the soil and make it healthy.

Healthy soil not only grows huge yields, it grows healthy food that nourishes your body. When you eat fresh food from healthy soil, it contains more nutrients than fresh food from poor soil. I can tell the difference even in the flavor, and so can some of our friends, who insist our tomatoes taste better than theirs even when we grow the same varieties. We all think that the flavor difference is because of our enriched soil. Everything you do in and with your garden starts with the quality of your soil. Nothing else you do matters nearly as much.

Good luck and keep us posted on how your soil progresses.

Dawn

Will do. Thanks. The part about the effects of mixing clippings and nitrogen to hasten the decomposition of chopped-up leaves is encouraging. Sounds like it won't take forever. The rest of it was not discouraging, but about what I expected. Well, I did not at all expect to hear that an intact leaf buried in the soil would take nearly so long to show signs of decomposition. I have access to plenty of leaf mold, "duff" and forest floor litter so I'll bring a couple of tubs in from the ranch to kick-start things.

I'm still going to grow some veggies in those blue protein tubs in Oklahoma -- they've been a smashing success by the way. But as mentioned in a previous post I unexpectedly found myself with a .35 acre lot right smack in the middle of Denton, Texas. The almost-black soil is pretty clayey and feels a bit dense. I'll do a soil test pretty soon. Hopefully it'll have a lot of minerals like my brother's black clay did.

Anything else you can think of to expedite this process is appreciated. Sure would be nice to improve the organic matter and soil structure a lot in this first year.

A neighbor has some very nice looking asparagus beds, quite a few actually. Finally got a chance to chat with her and she said they were 8 years old and producing very well. However she said the soil here is not good. She apparently knows what she is doing with those asparagus beds, but I'll wait until the soil report before I get down about the soil. It could be that a lack of only one mineral is the reason for her pessimism, and that may be easily remedied. The structure of the soil however isn't anything to write home about. Won't know if it's the kind that shrinks and cracks easily until we get a stretch of no rain.

I have *tons* of leaves bc so many people this time of year leave them nicely bagged on the streetsides for the city to pick them up. No mower at the moment, but once I get one these guys will be shredded and tilled in. I'll keep about half of 'em back though for composting with the grass clippings that'll be plentiful in a couple of months.

Charles

Charles, when I lived in Tahlequah I had oak trees all over the property. I found, shredding the leaves (I had a chipper/shredder) and piling them here and there, sort of as a mulch took over a year for those piles to shrink. The following year I put most of the leaves in plastic bags, poured a bunch of water in (about a half of a 5 gallon bucket) and sealed them off. I would turn the bags at least twice, left them laying in the back of the property over spring. They would be flat, heavy, and overall a lot smaller when I opened them about May. They were so much further in the decomposing, than the leaves from the previous year.

Good luck.

Moni

Over the years I've been all over the place regarding compost and "working it into the soil." Currently I'm at my most anti compost stance. With what you have for soil and for resources, the best thing you can do is cover the soil with the leaves. Shred them if you want the added hassle of shredding them, but just covering the soil with several inches of leaves is all you need to do. NOW IS THE TIME. Mother Nature covers Her soil with leaves in the fall, so you're a little late. The leaf covering will moderate the temperature and moisture content of the soil making it perfect for the microbes to populate. Those microbes are the organic matter that matter. If you want more visible OM in the soil, then grow cover crops all winter. The roots in the ground become the visible OM in the spring when you mow the cover crops off.

Rototilling upsets the soil microbe populations by mixing them up. Microbes live at defined soil depths. When you till the surface microbes end up at the bottom and vice versa. They all suffer a radical depopulation and have to rebuild.

Rototilling also upsets the soil capillary structure you have established. The pores in the soil allow air and water in. When you rototill the air is incorporated one time. Once you water it becomes a mud hole with no oxygen for the microbes.

You are aware of the issues with rototilling sawdust or other woody materials into the soil. The same holds for leaves to a lesser extent. Leaves need air exposure to decompose quickly. Burying them cuts off the air.

Thank you dchall, Moni, Dawn, George and dbarron, everyone. This has been very helpful.

I admit I had never even imagined that different microbes might thrive at certain soil depths and struggle (or die) at others. That makes so much sense.

I think it's fair to say in contrast that while nature (or "creation") is our model, we humans are especially capable of introducing modifications to the patterns we perceive in nature in order to bring about beneficial outcomes. It could be that by incorporating the right kind of amendments in the right way we are simply expediting what nature normally does in her own good time. The improved varieties of vegetables are perhaps a good example of this. Yes, there is a kind of deviation from natural patterns, but the humans are also conforming to and working within important natural boundaries.

Clearly many of our "modifications" end up being disruptions and are profoundly harmful not only to the non-human part of nature but also to humans (since we're part of nature too). But nature has also proven a capacity of healing herself (such as in allowing a garden or field to rest a couple of years), and perhaps occasional tilling will one day be regarded as a good practice because the end result is a greater depth and degree of organic matter and biological life than would have resulted from just piling things on top. But maybe not.

Hopefully, by means of conversations like the ones here on this forum, we can all arrive at better and better techniques.

Charles