I’m really beginning to see positive results of covering the beds with leaves in the fall. I’ve been pretty diligent about doing this for the last five years. This picture shows a bed I just cleaned off. It is almost totally weed free, and the few weeds that have sprouted are easily removed.
I even got some leaves into several of the north beds, which is way more of a wild area than the south beds. You can see the results of leaf cover on the bed on the left versus the bed on the right, which has a cover of sprouted weeds. I used to spend hours getting a single bed ready to go in the spring, now I can get a bed ready to go in about an hour after I clean the leaves off. That takes about 15 minutes using the long handle CobraHead first, followed by a hay fork. The hour includes working in some compost and shaping and raising up the sides of the beds by dragging up some dirt from the paths and doing some shallow cultivation with the CobraHead long handle and a final shaping with a steel rake. I’ve quit deep cultivation totally. I’m now pretty sure it’s unnecessary, if not actually harmful.
In addition to less work, the clay soil is becoming much softer and the worm population seems to be increasing. I would recommend this to anyone whose garden is small enough and has leaves at their disposal.