3 surprising solutions
If you have a backyard, there are always going to be a few downsides to it. As much as you might love how it looks or enjoy spending time outside with your friends and family (or by yourself – relaxing in the garden is a wonderful thing to do if you want a great, free way to de-stress!), having a backyard means putting in some work and effort, and one of the things you’ll feel as though you’re doing a lot of clearing away leaves, especially during the autumn and winter periods.
The question is, of course, what should you do with those leaves when you clear them? Where can you put them, and are they going to be of any use for anything else? These are great questions, and we’ve got some answers for you here, so keep reading to find out more.
Don’t Do Anything
This idea might surprise you, and it might actually make you very happy because we’re suggesting that you don’t really have to do anything at all with the leaves if you don’t want to. The thing with leaves is that they’re natural, so they’re going to decompose away and remove the issue themselves eventually, and in the meantime, they can be a wonderful place for insects and animals to live, ensuring the ecosystem in your backyard is well looked after.
Of course, the downside is that leaves are messy, and they can cause problems with your lawn because it won’t be able to breathe or get enough sunlight to stay alive. So as a compromise, you might want to rake up the leaves but then leave them on the lawn in one spot. It’s the best of both worlds.
Use Them As Insulation
Amazingly, leaves can be the ideal form of insulation for any kind of outdoor building, such as your Colorbond shed or garage, for example. Of course, there is a process you need to go through – you can’t just stick fallen leaves on the inside of your shed and hope that it works – but it’s not too arduous, and it can help improve how well the spaces retain heat (and if you use them for working in, that’s more important than you might imagine).
You’ll need to rake up the leaves and then stuff them into plastic bags. Pack them tightly together and you can create an entire extra layer of insulation for any outside space.
Turn Then Into Mulch
If you’re an avid gardener and you want your flowers and vegetables or anything else you plant to grow well, why not turn to a great source of free nutrients and mulch the leaves that would otherwise go to waste?
To do this, you need to mow the leaves. It sounds strange, but if you lay them out on the lawn and then use a lawnmower on them, you’ll mush them up into tiny pieces that you can then spread on top of your soil. Just be careful not to let the wet mulch touch the plants themselves, as that can cause disease.