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Fall, for many people, means yard work.

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Instead of tossing leaves after you rake them up, use them as compost for your garden.

But, before you start bagging up all of your leaves and leaving them by the side of the curb, why not think about putting them to good use, building organic matter and improving the health of your soil in your garden.

In nature, nothing is wasted. The leaves fall to the ground and slowly break down to make food for the trees and other plants. You can mimic this in your own garden by trying one, or all, of the following.

"¢ Feed the Soil: Spread them on the garden and then till them in. This will feed the worms and other microbes in the soil, providing you with much healthier, richer soil. Some leaves will still be in the soil next year, but they will break down over the course of the season. This approach is best taken if the soil isn't so wet that all your succeed in creating is a gooey mess.

"¢ Make compost: Add them to the compost pile. Leaves, particularly wet ones, tend to stick together in mats, so try chopping them up by running over a pile of them with the lawn mower (if you have a bagger attachment this will gather up the leaves for you) or mix them in with other garden debris so that they don't smother the pile and prevent it from breathing.

"¢ Mulch your garden: Spread them on the garden in a thick layer. This is particularly useful if you have already prepared raised beds for next year and don't want your soil to get blown away by the harsh winter winds.

To prevent them from blowing right back into the garden, weight them down with small branches, a hose pipe etc. Alternatively, chop them up as this prevents matting and makes it harder for them to blow away.

Mulching will smother out any early spring weeds next year, but you will also keep the soil cooler than if it was bare, so you may consider pulling the leaves back from the bed for a week or so in the spring, to allow it to warm up before planting next year.

You can use most kinds of leaves in your garden but try to avoid adding leaves with lots of seeds such as red maple 'keys' which will happily grow in your garden or compost pile. Also avoid adding oak leaves to your compost as they decompose very slowly indeed.

The great thing about fall is that not only will you have access to your own supply of free leaves, but also your neighbours' or indeed the entire street. After they have gathered and bagged them up, ask if they wouldn't mind if you took them away. Take care if they have dogs however, or you may get some unwanted additional materials in with the leaves.

The black spot that is commonly seen on maple trees in the fall is known as maple leaf tar spot. This disease makes the leaves a little less beautiful, but does not affect the overall health of the tree and certainly won't kill it. If you want to try to break the disease cycle you can burn your leaves, but this wastes a valuable resource and will likely not solve the problem anyway unless everyone in the entire neighbourhood does exactly the same thing. It's better just to accept it as part of nature.

* Rowena Hopkins is an organic farm inspector, consultant and educator. To learn more about organic gardening visit http://canadianfoodroots.wordpress.com