Fall is a great time of year to think about your soil. A little prep work now can go a long way next spring. What makes it easy is that an almost endless supply of material is close to hand! Yes, the dreaded fall raking actually has a good side.

All those leaves, properly tended, can make excellent compost material fairly quickly. Another term used for composted leaves is leaf mold. What I’ve found that works best is to rake them into narrow, long strips so that I can take my lawn mower and push it over them. I’ve swapped out the standard blade with a mulching blade that I picked up at the local hardware store. Once mowed, the leaves become smaller and ready to use. The important part of mowing them is to break them down from their large, flat size which can make them neatly stack one upon the other. This is bad because it prevents them from breaking down as quickly. This can be annoyingly slow if you have oak leaves.

At this point you have two choices — you could use them to put on your perennial beds, or mix them with some soil so they can break down further over the winter. Depending on your tree situation, you might have plenty for both!

If all this seems like too much work, there’s a third option I can recommend. I don’t do this myself, but its more of a limitation of my yard space. First, take four large stakes and pound them into the ground with a sledgehammer in a square shape. Leave about four feet of the stake exposed. Don’t worry if they’re not perfectly set — this isn’t a permanent structure. Then take some chicken wire and wrap them around the perimeter of the stakes. Use some wire to tie the chicken wire unto itself once you’ve gone all the way around. Now you can just fill your pen with your leaves and wait until next fall to use them. It’ll take about a year for them to break down in this fashion. You can make the pen any size you want, its really a matter of how many leaves you have. I don’t recommend making it any taller though. If its too tall, then you’re going to spend too much effort trying to dump them in there.