We’re finally getting our gardens under control for the winter and today was a good day for our usual drive-by mulching routine. Most of the leaves are down on the trees in our yard with only a few left on our neighbor’s silver maple. Instead of all the effort to rake those leaves up to the road for the town to compost, we have found that our lawn mower does a great job of chopping them up into itty-bitty pieces for our own compost. After dealing with most of the leaves under the trees and mulching them into the lawn, we rake some into the surrounding gardens. Then, after cutting down the tallest or otherwise taking care of some of the more delicate plants by manual pruning, we run the mower over the remaining debris and leaves, AKA drive-by mulching. Voilà! nearly instant compost material for the gardens and clean-up for the winter.
Update: A post and subsequent comments over at The Garden Professors talk about mulching and using leaves as lawn fertilizer here.
In the meantime, take a look at a few of the goodies we still have left in the gardens.
Carex 'Toffee Twist'
Crabapples
Even the forsythia has great fall color!
Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' against the blue fall sky
Still have lettuce coming on
Love the seed heads for the ligularia!
Stunning red leaves on the oakleaf hydrangea
What other colorful things do you have showing their stuff now? Are your gardens ready for the winter to come?
