If you want to make yourself a great soil conditioner without spending anything (something that really appeals to me) and simply recycle what nature gives you, rake or sweep up all the dead leaves you can find in the garden (nothing evergreen, such as holly, laurel or conifers), stick them in plastic bin bags and slightly dampen them if they are not moist already. Put the bags in a corner and forget about them for about a year or two and you then should get some great “leaf mould” that’ll perk up your soil no end. It takes hardly any effort as nature does most of the work for you. And all for the cost of a bin bag.
When working for the council, the leaves used to be a constant pain in the autumn, the endless raking, sweeping and bagging up, only to come back the next day to more of the same. I had a mate, a park keeper who’d tell me he’d never had hassle with leaves and one day told me his secret. What he’d do is, use a leaf blower to blast them through the railings of the park into the road for the poor old roadsweeper to collect and bag up. Council workers eh?
Weeds up to me knees 