Build Better Soil for Your Flowers with a Leaf Shredder

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Every year we receive loads of free organic matter that can enrich our garden bed soils to feed our landscape plants, flowers, herbs, and veggies.

Many people struggle to get those leaves off their property, raking them up and putting them out for the green waste pickup. But those leaves are good for the soil and they may have butterfly eggs on them… because that’s where many female butterflies lay their eggs.

The Xerces Society and many others who work to help our pollinators and to enrich our soils advise us to leave the leaves that fall from trees and shrubs each fall on the ground. There are several reasons for this.

Why keep the leaves?

Leaving the leaves is good for soil. They break down and return minerals to the soil and create new organic matter, creating a healthy layer of organic matter on top of the soil that protects and feeds vital soil organisms. Organic matter keeps soil pores open for better water penetration and vital oxygen intake. These are the best things we can do for our soils, it’s what they evolved to have.

Additionally, many species of butterfly and moth eggs are laid on leaves when they’re still in the tree. The idea is that the eggs are laid on the host plant, which are the plant species caterpillars need to feed on, and when the leaves fall the caterpillars don’t have far to go to get to their food source. (While they’re fattening up on their specific foliage they often become food for birds to feed their young, so we want to have plenty of butterfly and moth larvae for the birds, too.)

Mulching with leaves helps build soil for healthy perennial plants, including your cutting flowers. See my article on how to feed your perennial flower beds for more on that.

Leaving the leaves often doesn’t work

For many types of leaves and in many situations leaving leaves on the ground is an easy thing to do because they’re small. But one big problem most people have is that leaving leaves where they lie can smother the plants they land on. Some leaves are big, like the ones from our sycamore trees. And they’re bulky so they won’t necessarily flatten down through the winter. Or there are lots of leaves. Or there is a lawn under them and it may get smothered.  

This is what my situation is. Big, bulky sycamore leaves, lots of them.

And here’s what I do. I shred them. One effective thing to do is to use a leaf blower which vacuums up the leaves and shreds them into an attached bag, like this one by WORX. Good for small amounts of leaves.

But if you have a lot of leaves, there are electric free-standing leaf shredders that can process loads of leaves in about as much time as it takes to put the leaves in plastic lawn and leaf bags and take them to the curb.

The shredder I’ve been using is the Flowtron Leaf Eater. I’ve been very happy with it. But I have found the one that I would buy next, if and when my Flowtron gives out. It’s a Worx WG430 13 Amp  Leaf Mulcher. It’s quite a bit cheaper than the Flowtron, it has wet and dry settings, and unlike my Flowtron, it disassembles quickly for easy storage.

Leaf shredders can be used for weeds, too, and any soft herbaceous plant material. But no weed seeds.

Here are some tips for using leaf shredders:

• Feed the leaves slowly so they don’t clog up in the hopper
• Dry leaves are faster to work with
• It’s messy, and loud so be prepared with a rake, dirty clothes, gloves
• Definitely use a face mask for the dust, eye protection goggles, and ear protection
• Have spare trimmer string on hand
• Use leaf scoops for picking up and feeding leaves into the hopper

What to do with the shredded leaves

Once the leaves are shredded they can be used as a mulch around your trees and shrubs and your perennial flower beds. See my page on how to best feed your perennial plants. Or they can be used in the compost as a source of the carbon-rich material. You can even sprinkle it over your lawn or over a seed planting to hide the seeds from the birds.

If you have the space, piling them into a spot where they can slowly flatten and start to break down in a cold compost manner, over a season or two they’ll be easier to lay directly without shredding.

What about the butterflies?

And what about those butterfly and moth eggs? It’s an issue! I try to keep as much of the leaves of each species of tree whole as a mulch around that species of tree so at least some pollinators can survive. If not right at the plant, then I mulch shrubs at a very close-by spot.

This is a reason our usual landscaping practices that put trees in lawns is damaging to ecosystems. The soil organisms that benefit grasses are completely different from the organisms that live with trees and shrubs. So how do we help the soil? Landscape design needs to accommodate this difference. But that’s another whole topic.

But it leaves us needing to remove the pollinator egg-laden leaves and shredding them. Ouch, I don’t think many survive that treatment. So, leave as many as you can on the ground. Let them smother the lawn out to the dripline of the tree. Then at the least, shred the extra leaves to enrich your soils with mulching and composting.

Native trees and shrubs are the ones your local pollinators need, the non-native ornamentals do very little to nothing to foster them.

So if you have an abundance of leaves raining down on your yard each fall, get a shredder that will quickly shred them into a usable mulch or a compost ingredient to improve the nutrition and physical quality of the soil that feeds your plants.

I recommend the Worx WG430 13 Amp  Leaf Mulcher.

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