Gardening the Garden » Garden Plant » Oak leaves as mulch in veggie bed
Oak leaves as mulch in veggie bed
Question:
If you let it sit on the surface all summer, it makes a great mulch, and the worms will have done a good job at partially (if not totally) decomposing it by the fall. What is left can be turned under, and by springtime you’ll be ready for planting again!
Amen! The older I get, the lazier ..er, ah.. the "more sophisticated" my gardening gets. 
As luck has it, my back yard garden is at the edge of woods, and also at the bottom of a slope. Every fall, I just rake the back lawn downhill to the garden. All the leaves & dead grass blanket it to a depth of 3-4" or so. In the spring (I hear rumors we’ll have one some day), what hasn’t been tilled under by worms is raked aside to let the soil warm & dry out. My experience is that a mat of leaves can make a slippery path, so I mulch the summer garden with hay or straw. The leaf leftovers are fed to the compost pile, which my bagger-mower neighbors are happy to supply with fresh green clippings. Or, I dump them at the edges of the garden, to smother grass around the raspberries. (The hay/straw mulch is left in place, and typically has been worm-tilled by spring). It practically takes care of itself! Now if only I could find the sophisticated way to let the garden plant & harvest itself… — — sufficiently clever definitions of | Massachusetts Language Lab "feature" and "expected behaviour". | USDA Zone 5, more or less
Response:
| | I would think that leaves which have been composted would be much better as | the compost would help supply nutrients rather than compete. | |If the leaves were to be worked into the soil, I would agree about the |nitrogen. However, when applied as a mulch on top of the soil, they |will not have this effect, and will provide wonderful nutrients as the |part of the mulch that is in contact with the soil decomposes. This is |an entirely natural method of nourishing plants, comparable to the |recycling that takes place on forest floors. I agree with Don here. When I first replied to the question I too gave the opinion that they should be composted first. I have used oak leaves before, and they are somewhat tough to compost, and I find they have a tendency to mat together into a suffocating barrier. But Don also suggested in another reply that they can be chopped up with a shredder or a mower, and that is a an excellent suggestion to remedy that problem. Don is right. Organic material that is just on the surface will not drain the soil of nitrogen. Mix it in and you might have a problem, but the original question *was* asking about mulch, not soil enhancement. If you let it sit on the surface all summer, it makes a great mulch, and the worms will have done a good job at partially (if not totally) decomposing it by the fall. What is left can be turned under, and by springtime you’ll be ready for planting again! — Joe Oppelt replies you make to this post. My server doesn’t seem to give me everything posted to my newsgroups.) The opinion of my employer should not be inferred from my posting.
Response:
Oak leaves have a high carbon/nitrogen ratio. During the decomposition process, bacteria will use nitrogen otherwise available for your veggies. I would think that leaves which have been composted would be much better as the compost would help supply nutrients rather than compete.
If the leaves were to be worked into the soil, I would agree about the nitrogen. However, when applied as a mulch on top of the soil, they will not have this effect, and will provide wonderful nutrients as the part of the mulch that is in contact with the soil decomposes. This is an entirely natural method of nourishing plants, comparable to the recycling that takes place on forest floors. BTW, it was discovered that tree problems in some German forests were being caused by cleaning up of fallen leaves, thereby depriving the trees of their normal nutrients. Either leave leaf litter to rot, or provide some suitable organic substitute! Don Chapman Bio/Organics, Inc. Camarillo CA <http://www.bio-organics.com
Response:
Can you please tell me if using oak leaves as mulch in my veggie bed will harm the balance there? Thanks, tammy
Response:
Oak leaves have a high carbon/nitrogen ratio. During the decomposition process, bacteria will use nitrogen otherwise available for your veggies. I would think that leaves which have been composted would be much better as the compost would help supply nutrients rather than compete. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Can you please tell me if using oak leaves as mulch in my veggie bed will harm the balance there? Thanks, tammy