Leave the leaves or pick em up?

[ian mcenery]

Nearly all of my deciduous trees etc have dropped their leaves. We tend to keep the paths and lawn clear but in recent years I have, with the exception of beds with dwarf rhodos and other smaller choice  or evergreen plants where the foliage might be damaged, let the worms do their job and let them rot down in situ. I do anyway have 2 large compost heaps which are spread early spring made from othe garden waste.

I would be interested to hear what regimes others adopt.

[ChrisB]

I usually leave a lot of the debris over winter, but due to having very dry soil, I've removed most of mine this year to enable the precipitation to penetrate the soil more over the winter.  You probably don't suffer this way in the Midlands.

[David Shaw]

We tend to pick up 'most' of the leaves and store them for leaf mould. We are not fussy and don't try for every last one. My reasons for picking them up are as a source of leaf mould, to reduce the habitat for slugs and bugs over winter and to make the garden look just a little bit tidier.

[jomowi]

Ian
I too have this problem and like you selectively collect them for the compost.  The compost heap is struggling to keep up at present so rather a lot are still uncollected.  I usually collect up the wild cherry as the leaves are large and sit wet on other plants, The birch; I collect those on the lawn, the stony scree and any excessive heaps and from the paths, the rest either get collected in the course of general tidying throughout the year or left for the worms.  The oaks (the golden form of the american red oak; the leaves are larger than our native oaks) again get selectively removed, leaving the rest tend to blow under hedges where they get left.  Some subsequently get removed in the spring/summer when I want something to dilute a lot of fresh grass cuttings which tends to go slimy.  Likewise beech.  Rowans seem sufficiently small that many vanish on their own.  The resulting compost from all this is sieved after 3 years and used as a mulch.

Brian Wilson  Aberdeen

[ian mcenery]

Chris , David and Bryan thanks for your comments. I suppose I feel that having enough compost making materials it would be nice to let nature take it's course. In fact in my front garden which is more like a small wood has received years of this kind of neglect and as a result has produced  deep leafy soil. My major concern is really does this encourage more slugs and snails (my summer problem is a pain) or does it really make any difference?

In fact in the past clearing leaves I have disturbed and then labels leading me believing that I had more places to put plants and then finding the hard way that I didn't by then spearing some irreplaceable bulb

[Joakim B]

Maybe a bit late to answer but we used to pick up all the leaves on the lawn and the beds but now we only do it in the beds. As You say Ian this tend to result in losing/moving labels so this year I only did a light clearing with my hands rather than with a rake. I only take away the walnut leaves from the lawn since they are a bit aggressive to the lawn. The lawn mower takes up the rest (or what is left of it) when it is time to cut the grass.
I tend to try to tidy around plant that are eaten by slugs but do not know if it helps or just show the slugs where the food is. I hope that the native birds will pick the slugs up as part of their diet. It would be a huge source of food if they would be able to use it.

(All of the above is for how we do it in Sweden)
Kind regards
Joakim