As you clean up the garden, remember that leaves and other plant debris are valuable. They can be used to enrich the soil and nourish future plants. (Beth Botts/Morton Arboretum)
It’s cleanup time in the garden, but that doesn’t mean you need to whisk away every leaf and cut back every stem down to the bare soil.
“Some garden cleanup is necessary for good plant hygiene, especially if you’ve had pest or disease problems,” said Sharon Yiesla, plant knowledge specialist at the Plant Clinic at The Morton Arboretum. “But if you clean up too much, you can actually waste important nutrients and miss opportunities to keep your plants healthier.”
Instead, choose between what you need to clean up, what you can leave alone, and what you can use.
Here are her suggestions for how to button up the garden for winter.
Waste not, want not. A garden that is too clean and tidy may be wasting useful nutrients and organic matter. The leaves, stalks and other plant debris that fall to the ground are part of a natural cycle that enriches the soil, as they decay to nourish future plants. Keep them and use them as much as you can.
Clean up diseased or infested plants. If any of your plants had a serious problem, such as apple scab on crab apple trees or viburnum leaf beetles on viburnum shrubs, do clean it up to reduce the risk that the problem will return next year. Fungus spores and insect eggs can overwinter on affected leaves and branches. Collect them and dispose of them outside your yard, through leaf or landscape waste pickup. Don’t put them in your compost pile.
Use leaves as mulch. Mulch has many benefits. For example, it improves the soil and provides insulation so winter warm spells don’t prompt plants to sprout too early. Using leaves as mulch is easy and free; just rake them onto nearby garden beds or around trees and shrubs.
Shred leaves with the lawn mower. When leaves are cut into small pieces, they look more tidy and don’t blow around as much. Rake them into a pile on the lawn and run a power mower over them several times to cut them up. Then spread the shredded leaves as mulch or rake them out over the grass, where they will decay and enrich the soil.
Start a compost pile. Leaves are a major ingredient in compost, a nourishing soil amendment. In an out-of-the-way place, make a pile of leaves mixed with some green material, such as end-of-season annuals, and a little garden soil. In a few months, it will break down and become rich, brown compost, which can be added to beds to improve the soil and has many other uses in the garden.
Read more here.
For tree and plant advice, contact the Plant Clinic at The Morton Arboretum (630-719-2424, mortonarb.org/plant-clinic, or plantclinic@mortonarb.org). Beth Botts is a staff writer at the Arboretum.
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