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Photo by Bob Pennell Julie Hoskins empties a bag of leaves onto her garden in the Applegate Valley. Hoskins is one of 69 people who asked to receive leaves collected during the city of Medford's 1998 leaf pickup program. She asked for 1,000 bags to enrich the soil in her vegetable garden. Fall leaves put to good use Urban waste turns into boon for rural gardeners, others By BILL KETTLER Those leaves you raked and bagged last fall may have found a home in Julie Hoskins' garden in the Applegate Valley. They could be rotting quietly in an old mining trench at Bob Burr's place in Talent. Or they might have prevented Jerry Poppe's pipes from freezing out on Antelope Road during the December cold spell. Medford residents collected more than 90,000 bags of leaves by the time the city's leaf pickup program ended on New Year's Eve, and the leaves have found homes in quite a few distant places. Sixty-nine people asked for leaf deliveries at their homes, and some leaves traveled as far as the Applegate Valley and suburban Grants Pass. "We hauled thousands of (cubic) yards of leaves to those folks," said public works superintendent Wayne Pace. Many of the leaves found a final resting place in gardens like Julie Hoskins'. She took about a thousand bags, and scattered a thick layer of leaves across her vegetable garden. "The soil is very sandy," said Hoskins. "I thought (leaves) would be good for it." Hoskins also dumped bags of leaves around her roses and rhododendrons to quash weeds. "The oak leaves really keep the weeds down," she said. City officials estimate the leaf-bagging program will save at least $20,000 in leaf-disposal costs. With some minor costs still to be accounted, the 1998 leaf-disposal program cost about $53,000, said Roxanne Bergmann, of the public works department. Bergmann said hauling and dumping leaves cost about $82,500 in 1997. Thousands of bags of leaves ended up in an old mining trench at Bob and Jan Burr's home near Talent. For years the Burrs have been dumping leaves into the trench and letting nature convert them slowly to soil. "It really takes about two years," said Bob Burr, for leaves to rot on their own. Burr said dumping the leaf bags is slow, damp work. Occasionally the leaves begin to rot inside the bags, producing heady vapors as they compost. "Sometimes," he said, "you're working in a cloud of odious steam." Jerry Poppe took about 400 bags of leaves for his garden on Antelope Road. But he used a few dozen bags of leaves to prevent an expensive plumbing repair bill during the hard freeze just before Christmas. "I took a bunch of the leaves in bags and packed them around my well," said Poppe. "I think it saved me. All my neighbors around me had frozen pipes. I think I'm the only one in my neighborhood who didn't have any pipes break." More than 2,700 cubic yards of leaves went to the South Stage Landfill, but not as trash. The leaves will be composted to create soil for restoring a rock pit at the site, said landfill manager Don Cordell of Rogue Waste Systems. In 1997, about 33,000 bags of leaves went to the landfill, for a volume of about 4,900 yards. Bergmann said just 407 cubic yards of leaves went to the Dry Creek Landfill. City crews will be coming to pick up the empty leaf bags sometime soon, said Bergmann. "That's our way of saying `Thank you,"' said Bergmann, "for all the money we saved." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA