if you want them dry ... then they should be bagged ...

if you dont care.. just tarp them ....

or just pile them ..

ken

btw ... why cant you just put them on the beds now.. why wait until spring???

I don’t want to put them in the beds now because I still have many more leaves that need to fall. I use a blower to remove the leaves from the beds. If I put the mulched leaves down now, they will just get blown all over when I try to remove the newly fallen leaves.

We use our blower to put the leaves on the bed as and after they fall. It's easy, and that way you do not have to prepare another pile.

In the spring, I merely shift the leaves about as the plants emerge. The good thing about having a hosta garden covered with leaves in spring is that you can wait to remove them until after the last spring frost, so you will not have to see damaged leaves all season.

Since I live in the middle of a hardwood forest, I have a lot of leaves to deal with. They are garden gold.

We remove the leaves from our beds otherwise they would blow all over our lawn and our neighbors' lawns. No one wants dead patches in their lawns where the oak leaves smother the grass. The worst person on our block is the guy who won't pick up his leaves and then allows the winds to blow them all over.

My hosta boarder our lawn. They are under 80 yr old burr oak. The leaves fall off the trees but never blow into the lawn. I blow the leaves from the lawn where the oaks branches drop leaves onto the grass back into the hosta. It is a perfect set up. The bagging of leaves would take me weeks, hours I don't care to put into LEAVES. Perhaps a boarder would contain your leaves? Come spring I blow the leaves and dead hosta remains farther into the woods so I can watch the pips emerge and cut down the slug breeding grounds. Is this "best practice"--well it keeps me IN the garden and my hosta SHINE in the neighborhood so ask me how much I care about "best practice"!! After a neighbor, who happens to be a Master Gardener; spent two days cutting back hostas and removing/bagging all the remnants she commented, "We (neighbors) were talking; you don't do all that work and yours are beautiful. I just nodded and said ya I decided years ago to do what I enjoyed and leave the rest. Otherwise it is WORK and who needs that?!! I have about 10x the number of hosta anyone around has so there is THAT as to why I don't...but still.

we clean the leaves out of the borders in the spring (sometimes lol)..we clean the roof, driveway, deck and grass but the leaves stay around the plants..I think leaves enrich the soil and provide winter protection..a spring pic where you can see I'd removed the leaves that were surrounding the hostas but hadn't cleaned around the ferns..