PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - It’s time to make a pile of leaves! Look at falling leaves as the best fertilizer money can buy – except that it’s free.

Gardeners often call leaf mold ‘black gold’ because a pile of leaves decomposes into a beautiful dark soil enhancer that you can use on your lawn, to mulch perennial beds and gardens, improve clay OR sandy soils, and add to planting holes for new shrubs and trees. You can mix in grass clippings and vegetable peels to compost too, but at least keep your leaves; in a pile by the garage, penned in with some chicken wire or hidden behind a pretty piece of fence.

You can shred leaves with a lawnmower or a leaf vac so that they’ll breakdown faster. But even if you never lift a finger, your pile of leaves will turn into fabulous fertilizer over time.

So, stop giving away something you’d pay to have delivered! This year, pick out a place to put your precious pile of leaves.

Reported By Phran Novelli, KYW Newsradio