How To Make Leaf Mulch

Benefits of Leaf Mulch

Leaf mulch and wood mulch provide many of the same benefits, but generating your own mulch allows you to save money and reduce your carbon footprint. Leaf mulch provides a variety of other benefits: 

• It protects your soil from eroding
• Helps retain soil moisture for your garden beds and landscaping
• It provides a habitat for beneficial microorganisms 
• The fallen leaves contain essential plant nutrients 
• Leaves are available to you right from your backyard
• It reduces the amount of weeding needed

If you are unable to gather enough leaves to cover the needed area(s), you can ask neighbors if you can use their leaves. Most people will appreciate that they don’t have to take care of the leaves themselves. You can also mix your leaf mulch with other mulches, saving you money in the future! Look below at the leaf mulch Longwood Gardens was able to generate for their many gardens. 

Some areas offer leaf processing services. If you don’t have anywhere to store leaves for the winter, you can still benefit from local services! For shredding or chopping the leaves, you can use a lawnmower or use a shredding machine. At MacKissic, we have many options that make this task easier for commercial and residential properties. 

How Do You Make Leaf Mulch?

Once you’ve gathered all the leaves you’d like to save for mulch, you will need to shred them. Shredding should be done prior to winter for best results. Once your leaf pile is shredded, ideally you should have somewhere to keep it for the winter. Throughout winter the pile will decompose and reduce in size. It is important to shift the leaves around about once a month to help the leaves break down further, making it nutrient-dense for your soil in spring!

Joe Gardener shared this helpful image to show the difference in freshly shredded leaves (left side), compared to leaves that were sitting since last fall (right side). The right side mulch is rich and nutrient-dense, perfect for landscaping or gardening.

Some areas offer leaf processing services. If you don’t have anywhere to store leaves for the winter, you can still benefit from local services. For shredding or chopping the leaves, you can use a lawnmower or use a shredding machine. At MacKissic, we have many options that make this task easier for commercial and residential properties.

MacKissic’s Leaf Cycler

Mighty Mac Vacuum

We offer many commercial and homeowner products that have different benefits depending on what you’re looking for. If you have more than leaves and small branches to shred, one of our Mighty Mac Shredder-Chippers may be best! If you have a large property that would take hours to collect all of the leaves, our Mighty Mac Leaf Blower will resolve that issue! 

Making your own mulch at home is a rewarding, money-saving task. Leaf mulch will provide your gardens and landscaping areas with nutrient-dense mulch. Once you’ve completed the leaf collection and shredding, you can let it sit for the rest of the season while the leaves break down. Happy mulching!