Leaves are everywhere!

Greetings from Greensboro, NC:

It is the season to rake leaves to the curb and let the city vacuum them up to their commercial composting business. Just on my block, there are so many leaves, some already mulched and the rest either bagged or in huge piles. I have a compost heap/pile mixed with greens and browns. I want to develop a leaf mold area.

How much is too much when it comes to gathering this free and abundant resource? My garden is currently 12 feet by 50 feet and I am planning to develop a permaculture area in the surrounding portions of my lot.

What do you think, get as much as possible for the future or show some restraint?

Thanks,

John

I am on the show-restraint side of things. Because I don't know what poisons my neighbors applied to their properties. I don't know how many of those poisons I'll be eating if I add the leaves to my garden. So for me, the math works out as follows: It's better to have a garden with lower fertility than risk poisoning myself. My world view is tarnished because I worked for two decades as a chemist, and much of my work involved studying pesticide residues.

I have a city lot that is more like a rock quarry than the orchard I want it to be.
So I am biased,but I say frankly you can and make fenced in piles where you want to grow.
I add some soil to the top of my piles and grow in them from the beginning.
Huge bounty of crops can be had even as you create rich soil.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
I am on the show-restraint side of things. Because I don't know what poisons my neighbors applied to their properties. I don't know how many of those poisons I'll be eating if I add the leaves to my garden. So for me, the math works out as follows: It's better to have a garden with lower fertility than risk poisoning myself. My world view is tarnished because I worked for two decades as a chemist, and much of my work involved studying pesticide residues.

Thanks for the response. My neighborhood is very shaded with mature trees, not a lot of chemicals going into the sparse lawns.