Raking Leaves

Leaves, before shredding

Over the weekend, I was beginning to rake up this fall's leaves.  So many folks just rake them up and throw them away.  I see lots of huge bags of them out at the curb around town.  When I rake, I use my garden vac to shred the leaves, and then add them to my compost bins or bag them up to create leaf mold. This lets me keep all the nutrients used to grow these leaves to nourish my garden next year. There certainly are enough to provide all I want and more.

Leaves, after shredding

I was curious about how much shredding reduces the volume of leaves.  So I filled my garden trug with leaves, packing them down.  I shredded these leaves with the garden vac, then dumped them back into the trug. The second photo shows how much less space the same leaves take after shredding. It was quite a lot less, so it's sure worth the effort to shred the leaves before bagging them up or mixing them with the compost.