KoiBoi,
Well said. Until my own trees grew large enough to provide me with enough leaf material (and limbs small enough for my chipper ( see:
http://www.gardenendeavors.com/rack/chipper.html ) to turn them into mulch as well) I spent hours every fall lurking through heavily treed neighborhoods pulling my trailer and collecting bags of leaves left for trash pickup. Once ground up, they provided me with great organic material to use everywhere (of course with a heavy dose of lime in the vegetable garden). I generally made twelve to fifteen trips, collecting fifteen or more large bags of leaves each trip. Only occasionally I would get a bag that included any trash, usually only the cardboard box that the bags had come in. Regarding Rodale, I too read most of his books and even subscribed to his magazine for years, and while he obviously gave a lot of good advice, I also firmly disagreed with him on his fundamental teaching about strict organic methods regarding no chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or fertilizers. The cost of lives that would have occurred worldwide without each of these over the last 50 years would doubtless be in the tens of millions. And Rodale's opinion that insects would prefer to attack weak plants in the garden, in favor of healthy ones is, in my opinion, ludicrous. However, pathogen free gardens high in organic materials will always outperform gardens lacking in organic material, both because of the reasons you state, but also because of the soil consistency that promotes easy water absorption, drainage, and aeration due to the "fluffiness" high levels of organic material provide.
As you can see, I also tend to be "wordy".
John
