Do Fall Leaves Make Good Compost?

Fall leaves are a nutrient-rich soil amendment, but do they make good compost? They do, but they’ll need extra care to morph into rich, crumbly soil. Learn how to turn fall leaves into beneficial compost with backyard composter Jerad Bryant.

A bright yellow rake is leaning against a large pile of dry, curled brown foliage, resting on green grass under a tree in a sunlit garden.

Contents

Autumn foliage falls in masses as deciduous trees and shrubs prepare for winter. If you live near these trees, your yard is probably full of fallen, dry leaves! An easy way to process them is to make compost. It’s a nutrient and microbe-rich amendment that helps soils and plants thrive.

Autumn is the ideal time to start a compost pile. The leaf litter creates a huge source of raw debris that you can mix with grass clippings, garden waste, or kitchen scraps. Autumn is perfect because piles need consistent moisture, mild temperatures, and sunshine. The season has these traits, making the decomposition process simple and easy.

Whether you have a little or a lot of leaves, you’ll want to recycle them in a way that helps your local environment. Composting is perfect because you upcycle the leaves and create a free soil amendment that helps species grow in the future. You’ll clean up your yard and help the earth in one fell swoop! 

So, the question still begs asking. Do fall leaves make good compost? Let’s find out.

The Short Answer

Fall leaves make excellent compost! They just need other materials to mix with and create a balanced, healthy amendment. If you make a pile of leaves with no other materials, you’ll create leaf mold. It’s a carbon-rich soil resource that mimics compost but lacks high amounts of nitrogen. It’s more beneficial as a mulch rather than for fertilizing tender, annual crops.

Whether you decide on creating compost or leaf mold, you can do so knowing you’re converting organic matter into available plant nutrients. You’ll help your garden and the local environment when you keep leaf litter in your garden.

The Long Answer

A pair of gloved hands are placing brown, orange, and yellow foliage into a pastel pink bucket beside a wooden fence in a well-maintained yard.
Gather your waste and get ready to turn it into black, crumbly, humus-rich compost!

Leaves make a good addition to compost piles, but you’ll need other debris to balance them out. Gather your waste and get ready to turn it into black, crumbly, humus-rich compost!

Balance Browns and Greens

Two hands are holding a mix of dried foliage and pine needles, carefully balancing the bundle over a grassy lawn.
To balance them in compost, you’ll need some kitchen scraps or grass clippings to mix in.

Good compost has a healthy mix of greens and browns. These two terms represent different types of debris; greens are fleshy, nitrogen-rich organic matter, while browns are dry, carbon-rich materials. A ratio of 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen by weight creates the best final product with little issues. 

Achieve 30:1 carbon-to-nitrogen weight ratios by adding one shovelful of greens and two or three shovelfuls of browns. This ensures a proper balance of both materials so the pile decays without bad smells or attracting pests and rodents. Because fleshy greens weigh more, you’ll need fewer scoops than light, waterless brown materials.

Fall leaves are brown materials—they contain lots of carbon and little nitrogen, among other micronutrients. Brown materials are things like straw, fall debris, and chemical-free paper or cardboard. To balance them in compost, you’ll need some kitchen scraps or grass clippings to mix in. Other green materials include manure, alfalfa meal, and coffee scraps.

Chop Them Up

A close-up view of finely shredded brown organic material scattered evenly across the ground, with hints of texture from broken twigs.
Speed up the decomposition process and prevent clumping by chopping the residues into small pieces.

Autumn weather can be wet, cold, and rainy. These conditions cause excessive wetness in your piles, making them soggy messes. This is worse when leaves are full-size. Their surfaces cling to each other, forming solid masses of decaying debris.

Speed up the decomposition process and prevent clumping by chopping the residues into small pieces before adding them to the piles. The smaller size helps them come into contact with more decaying organisms and worms and prevents clumps from slowing down decomposition.

Some tools help make the chopping process less time-consuming. If you have a lawn, consider scattering the leaves over it and mowing them up with a mulch plug. Your lawn mower chops up the leaves and puts them into a bag, doing most of the work for you! Other ways involve using pruners, rakes, or shovels to break and chop big pieces into smaller ones. 

Compost Has Needs

A person in blue sleeves and white gloves is spraying water over layers of dried organic matter piled in a wooden container in an outdoor setting.
For proper water ratios, ensure your piles have 50% moisture.

Once you make a pile some tasks help keep it in tip-top shape. Piles need three things to work: air, water, and a proper balance of browns and greens. Piles may suffer and start smelling rotten without one of these three components! They ensure the microbes, worms, and larvae stay content and work to defeat diseases and weeds

For proper water ratios, ensure your piles have 50% moisture. Grab a clump of your compost and squish it—it should feel like a wrung-out sponge. You want it to be moist but not soggy. The decaying organisms appreciate mild ambient temperatures, and they’ll go dormant as hard frosts grow more frequent in winter. Fall has ideal, cool temperatures that allow the microbes to work without drying out or getting too hot.

The final key to success is turning! Turning is a process of rotating composting materials so more air can reach them. A pitchfork is the best tool for this practice, although shovels, rakes, and hoes can work instead. 

Start by stabbing your pile with the tool, then lift and rotate the debris. Go around your pile and do this on every side to ensure you don’t miss any spots. Use a rake at the end to arrange the waste so it makes a neat, tidy pile. Turn daily or every other day for hot compost and once a month or more for cold compost.

Make Leaf Mold Instead

A neat heap of dark brown material sits in a storage bin, with a small shovel and a container nearby in a dimly lit area.
Although it requires less inputs than compost, it takes longer to decay fully.

Leaf mold uses a similar process as compost but it’s entirely leaves! It’s the perfect amendment to make in autumn if you lack green waste. Although it requires less inputs than compost, it takes longer to decay fully and most piles won’t be ready until spring. The final product is worth the wait—it’s black, earthy smelling, and full of nutrients for plants.

To make leaf mold, stack a pile of chopped leaves three feet tall and wide. I like adding small twigs into the piles, as they help create structure and facilitate good airflow. They’re rich in carbon, like a leaf, but they can slow down the decomposition process. Only add a few to help separate the moist leaf layers, and avoid overloading the piles with wood.

Manage leaf mold by turning, watering, and feeding your piles as necessary. Leaf mold needs turning once a week or more to help speed up its breakdown. Every time you turn, you introduce waste to new microbes and worms that voraciously feast on it.

Water the piles so they’re 50% moist like a wrung-out sponge. You’ll have ready leaf mold in three months or longer—the more often you turn it the quicker it breaks down. 

How To Use Compost and Leaf Mold

A shovel full of rich, dark soil is being spread around small bushes with red-tinged leaves in a colorful garden bed.
Apply it to raised beds as an amendment or mulch.

Compost and leaf mold help certain plants more than others, although you can use both on any plant species. Compost has more nitrogen in it, which causes high levels of bacterial activity. Annual and perennial plants with lots of vegetative tissue appreciate nitrogen and bacteria in their soils, making compost an excellent amendment for these species. 

Leaf mold is different; it is made entirely of fallen tree foliage, meaning it has lots of carbon and little nitrogen. Fungi appreciate decaying carbon sources, and they’re more active where it’s present in high amounts. Leaf mold benefits these fungi, and fungi help woody trees, shrubs, and perennials thrive.

Nowadays, soil scientists are uncovering an entire universe underneath the ground. Studies prove the amazing and important qualities of the fungi, bacteria, and archaea that form partnerships with plants. They live below us in silence, playing a secret role in almost every natural process in our environments.

Mycorrhizae form partnerships with plant roots and create an underground fungal network for maintaining forests. They break down nutrients and feed them to plants in exchange for sugars. You can use these natural partnerships to your benefit by adding compost or leaf mold where they benefit your plants most.

Other Ways To Upcycle Fall Debris

A young tree is surrounded by golden-brown organic matter on the ground, creating a neat ring on a lush, grassy lawn in a vibrant, park-like setting.
The thick, decaying layer adds nutrients, microbes, and worms to the soil as it breaks down.

If you have too many piles already, you might be wondering if there are any other ways to recycle your fall debris. There are! They’ll decay on their own without any interference as they do in nature. When trees dump their canopies, they drop them onto the forest floor. The thick, decaying layer adds nutrients, microbes, and worms to the soil as it breaks down.

You can simulate this in your garden by leaving the leaves where they fall. If they fall on your lawn, use a lawn mower with a mulch plug to chop them into the soil. If they fall on your plants, rake them over the soil’s surface so they cover plants’ root zones. 

Cover anywhere there is bare soil with leaves before winter. They’ll insulate the ground and decay in spring as warm temperatures arrive. Where winters are mild they’ll decay throughout the cold season and form ready soil by spring. 

Another inventive way to use them is to make art! Dry and press them for beautiful autumn collages, or use them as prints for illustrations. They add a touch of the outdoors to art canvases, bringing a sense of the garden into our precious homes. 

Share This Post
A vibrant green expanse stretches into the distance, with tall, colorful trees standing at the far edge beneath a glowing, orange-hued sky.

Gardening Tips

9 Fall Lawn Care Tips

Fall is a pivotal time in the life of a lawn. Like many other plants, grasses actively develop roots in the mild seasonal respite before entering winter survival mode. Fall is also prime for reseeding, laying new turf, and tending to established lawns. With gardening expert Katherine Rowe, set your lawn up for success by implementing a few fall protocols.

A person in red gloves pulls a small green weed from the soil, surrounded by healthy plants with soft, brown mulch in the background.

Gardening Tips

Don’t Make These 11 Fall-Gardening Mistakes This Year

There’s a surprising amount of work to be done in the fall garden, not only to set the stage for the best spring ever but also to protect your perennials, soil, and local wildlife through the coldest months of the year. It’s easy to make a mistake or two, especially after an exhausting summer of keeping track of all your plants. Plant biologist Emily Estep will help you steer clear of pitfalls by listing 11 fall-gardening mistakes to avoid.

A close-up of delicate leaves coated with a silvery sheen, giving them a soft, velvety appearance as they overlap in various directions.

Gardening Tips

Should You Water the Fall Garden Until the First Frost?

As we excitedly plant and enjoy time outside this season, roots are busy growing and developing before winter’s turn. To sustain a healthy garden that overwinters heartily, plants need adequate moisture heading into frost. Explore when and how to water before the first frost with gardening expert Katherine Rowe.

Vibrant lilac flowers soak up the golden sunlight, their delicate petals unfurling gracefully. Lush leaves form a tranquil scene, enhancing the ethereal beauty of the blossoms in their radiant display.

Gardening Tips

Never Prune These 13 Plants in Fall

As leaves fall and reveal crisscrossing branches, your first impulse may be to grab the pruners! Fall is an ideal time to prune species that bloom on new wood and cold hardy species. You’ll want to avoid chopping spring-blooming plants that bloom on old wood. Learn 13 of the most common shrubs you should leave alone during the fall alongside native plant gardener Jerad Bryant.

A lush scene filled with vivid purple and pink flowers thriving amidst abundant greenery, with tall plants stretching up toward the sky, partially covering a wooden fence and a small shed in the background.

Gardening Tips

7 Benefits of a Messy Garden

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Messy gardens perfectly represent this phrase, as they create a new standard of ornamental beauty in the landscape. They also save you a ton of work! Join native plant gardener Jerad Bryant to see how a messy garden can boost biodiversity while saving you time and money.