Adding Organic Matter to the Garden Soil

I'm always looking for good stuff to feed my garden soil.  A good friend of ours knows how much we like to incorporate organic matter into our garden.  She had raked up 22 big contractor bags of leaves from her yard and wanted to know if I wanted them.  Of course we want them!  We made 2 trips to her house to load up the bags of leaves.  It would be a tragedy to send those to the landfill!  I lined them up against the garden fence and got to work.

Incorporating leaves, compost, and organic matter is so healthy for your soil.  My garden slopes south and really gets muddy the further south you go.  You can kind of tell in the photo below.  I began digging holes in the walkway between the rows to accept the leaves.

I dug the hole about a foot deep and deposited the dirt on the backside.  Deep-digging the soil keeps the ground loose and helps the roots of the plants to mine down deep to access nutrition and water.

Once the hole was perfectly dug, I poured in some of the leaves.  Then I stomp on the leaves in the hole to compact them.  I pour more leaves in and stomp it down again.  Finally I pour more leaves and stomp until the crunched up leaves are even with the top of the hole.  Then I get my shovel and pull all the dirt back over the leaves. 

Then I move further down, digging another hole and repeating the process.  When I'm finished, the dirt between the rows that was formerly a sunk in walkway or furrow, is now level with the rows.  It will sink down a little as rain water packs down the dirt that covers the leaves and the leaves start to decompose.  Adding leaves to the garden raises the ground level so that the southern part of the garden is not as muddy all the time.  The organic matter will rot in the ground and I've found that it attracts tons of earthworms.  It also makes the soil easier to work.  Finally, the organic matter in the soil holds moisture in those hot dry months of summer.  So thankful to our friend by letting us recycle her leaves!