Leaves are starting to turn, and that means that we’ll be raking soon. If you have new grass growing, it is especially important to keep leaves from covering your lawn.

Fall leaves can be a benefit to your garden, both as a mulch around trees and shrubs and as an ingredient in compost. Putting leaves in garden beds and around plants will help keep weeds down and retain soil moisture. The leaves will eventually break down and add nutrients to the soil. If you don’t like the look of leaves as mulch, composting is the way to go. You don’t need a fancy composter to do the job. Leaves are high in carbon but low in nitrogen, so adding nitrogen in the form on fertilizer (WITHOUT weed killers) or green material (such as scraps of fruits and vegetables) will speed the process. For more information on composting, click here

If you don’t wish to compost or have more leaves than you can possibly use, the city of Durham picks up bagged leaves (or leaves in bins) if you subscribe to the yard waste service. The city doesn’t pick up unbagged leaves. Contact your waste collection service for yard waste information for residents outside Durham city limits.

No yard waste service? No problem – here’s another idea for your leaves:  Briggs Avenue Community Garden wants your leaves! Bag them up and bring them to the garden — we’ll have a sign up showing where you can dump them, any time, 24/7. We will shred them and add the leaves to our compost bins and they will add valuable organic material to our plots. You cannot bring us too many! Briggs Avenue Community Garden is located at 1598 S Briggs Ave, Durham, NC 27707