Garden advice: Thorny problems

Garden tips and advice from our resident expert Helen Yemm. This week: collecting leaves, ground cover and tricky roots.


Collecting leaves

This is the time of year that Harry Brookes and his wife enjoy the least. Keeping on top of all the falling leaves is a job they could do without and having read that I have a large oak tree in my garden, Harry asks if I have any helpful tips to impart that will make his life easier.


While I cannot claim to have a simple solution to the problem, I do feel that this year I am a little ahead of the game.

I now have some labour-saving equipment, and, furthermore, while I had time a few months ago, I built a couple of new leaf cages - simple constructions of chicken wire wrapped around four wooden posts hammered into the ground in tucked-away parts of the garden.

Those with fewer leaves can stuff them in plastic bags, seal them and tuck them away somewhere out of sight. The contents will turn into sludgy leafmould within a year or so. I have also seen mesh bags sold for the purpose.

But how can you capture all these leaves in the first place with the minimum of fuss - and, indeed, why bother?

Waiting for leaves to get trapped in their final resting places around the garden in January is frustrating, and letting them settle creates a cosy underworld for slugs and snails. So at this time of year I rake up much of the daily mess and put it in large, tough tip-bags that I can drag around as I work.

I use a soft plastic or even a rubber-tined rake that does the minimum of damage to the lawn and border plants. (Plastic rakes are fairly ubiquitous. I always use a flat-ended version from Gardena. Rubber rakes are, however, not that common - mine is from Spear and Jackson).

Really good besoms -traditional witches' brooms - often made locally, are hard to find. The best are made from soft birch twigs. A bamboo-twig version I bought last year turned out to be uselessly rigid.

And for picking up leaves efficiently? I always lose my two bits of plywood, plastic "hands" drive me to distraction, so I now use a two-handled grabber. There are lightweight aluminium things around - although a friend of mine has a husband who finds these too lightweight for "real men's work".

The newest leaf-grabber is a thoroughly macho and highly robust gadget that is strong enough to take the back-ache out of picking up horse manure as well. It is called a Grab-o-saurus (0845 680 0068; www.grab-o-saurus.com) and I am happily putting one through its paces this year.

As the daily leaf-shower becomes a deluge, I either mow them up or (reluctantly) get out my electric blower/sucker/muncher/bagger, which noisily reduces the volume of the leaves, thereby shortening their rotting time considerably.

My aim is to get everything stowed away by Christmas. Whatever methods I use, it always seems like a lot of work. But the pleasure derived from digging out that lovely leafmould makes up for it. Almost.