Leaves as mulch for playground?

[Allen]

Hi Folks.

I don't know very much about gardening or landscaping so please excuse me if this is a silly question, but can I used mulched fallen leaves as a bed for a playground? I have ready that chopped leaves can make a nice nutritious mulch for gardens and can be used to decorate trees and shrubs. But can I use it to place underneath my kid's playground as an alternative to standard mulch or rubber mulch? I guess my real question is, if I did that would it decompose into a nasty moldy mess. I think freshly mulched fallen leaves might make a nice bed but if it will, as I suspect, turn to a soggy nasty mess it's not a good idea. Juts trying to deal with lots of leaves while saving money on purchasing something for the playground.

Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[JBtheExplorer]

That is an interesting question. I use leaves for mulch around some of my garden spots and never really noticed any mold problem and it's never really become a nasty mess, but I would imagine you would make a much thicker layer under a playground area than I do with my plants. I'm not really sure what to say, but I do think it's a very interesting question, as I'm all for using natural materials as much as possible, and if that worked out, that would be great!

 

[Chuck]

I would be fine in a playground but wouldn't last long at all because of all the kids trampling it into very small pieces which would then make it decompose rapidly. That and what the wind didn't blow away. But all in all a good way to get rid of leaves if you don't have a compost pile. Anything would be better than rubber mulch

 

[DeborahJane]

I certainly use it as mulch on my garden beds. With my experience I find it can be slippery on the driveway though, maybe a down side. Would make for a soft landing. Good luck.

 

[Kansas Terri]

I believe that the kids would come inside after a good hard play episode, and there would be bits of leaves in their shoes, in their hair, in the folds of their shirts, and so forth.

That is, assuming that your kids are like my kids were with a pile of leaves, which might not be the same thing at ALL because your kids would be playing with the slide while my kids were playing in the leaves! They were grabbing them and throwing them into the air and so forth.

On the GOOD side, I think my kids were playing in the leaves because a heap of leaves was a novelty, and the novelty of a thing soon wears off.

So I guess I have no advice to give you one using fallen leaves as a playground mulch, other than that you might want a "Plan B" if you start seeing trails of dead leaves across the living room floor. I have no idea how long leaves remain messy because my kids lost interest in burrowing in leaves in just a couple of days, and then I removed the leaf pile. They were kind of cute with their pile of leaves, but I was not sorry to see that they were done with it!

 

[dave david]

When we were kids, we would loved to have had leaves year round to play in. As to the use as a base, as long as the base is well drained, I can't think of a reason not to use them. As to the leaves in their hair and clothes and shoes, that is what a broom is for out side the door where the kids come and go, from. Even the broom can be a toy, as we had tons of fun "sweeping" each other off. It was probably not as much fun for my youngest brother, as he usually got the brunt of the physical sweeping, before we went on in.

I have not seen more than a handful of kids out side playing for at least a decade, or more, and we have lived in areas where there were plenty of kids. Oft times the parents did not want the kids to get dirty, or that they may catch something or get a tick. Some parents did not want the kids to mess up their yards, so when our son was young our yard had the skateboard grind rail, as the boys helped me install it, understood what we did, the tools needed and loved how well "their" work performed. Our yard had football/soccer/lacrosse gear in it.

As an adult, I cherish the play time I had as a kid, and enjoy any play time, outside I can get now.

While helping a friend put down 2000 sq feet of metal roofing last week, I took my break on the roof, as the sun was bright, the temp was perfect, the sky was clear and I was enjoying it immensely. Play daily.