You actually have extra chopped leaves? I have but a 1/2 acre yard and about 1/3 of it is garden and I do have three large trees with which I have to contend but still don;t have enough, All leaves get blown into the yard and I mulch them where they land along with a lot of pulled out perennial stems. From there, they get blown back into the gardens, picked up into barrels for next spring or just left there on the lawn if they are not too thick. We have leaf pick up and I go to the town yard for dry mulch if I need more or they mix them with soil as mulch to give away next year. I had not thought of the pine mulch but wonder if that is good on the gardens in general. I have heard that wood mulch is different than leaf as somehow the critters that break it down actually rob the soil of nutrients. Maybe that is only rumor... This time of the year, I do wander about town gathering curb side discarded trees to cut branches to cover my mums though. . This post was edited by Emerogork2 on Thu, Jan 1, 15 at 12:54

I've got rosemary, oregano, thyme, and mints in pots too. All of mine do fine through the winter (I'm in s.e. Wake Co). I can harvest from rosemary and thyme throughout the winter and a sometimes a little oregano (but I usually just use it dried because it's easier). My mints are in pots sunk in the ground to attempt to contain them and they die back during the winter. I usually keep my pots in a somewhat sheltered spot up against the house to keep them a little warmer. If it gets really cold (teens - low 20's) I throw a floating row cover over them. I'd just dry the sage. It takes up less space that way. And sage holds it's flavor well dried. I save freezer space for basil, cilantro, parsley, and chives.

I've done a fair amount of research into this question and have found that the best way to preserve seeds is to ultra-dry them. Research done in this area indicates that seeds may remain viable for up to 40 years if properly preserved. The best method appears to be to seal the seeds in a container with silica gel. Normal "dry" seeds are (IIRC) in the 5%-8% moisture content range. Ultra-dry seeds are in the 1%-3% range. For long-term storage of seeds, the quality of the container matters. Plastic containers are all moisture permeable and unsuited to long-term seed storage. One study compared dozens of different kinds of containers and found that only pure glass (glass tubes sealed by melting the glass tip closed), metal cans (think "canning operation") and metal-glass containers akin to mason jars were suitable for long-term storage. Of these, the mason jar is probably the easiest to use. A little less effective, but still pretty good, would be commercial glass jars like the kind used to hold jam, that is, a container that is all-metal and glass with a good seal. The method I settled on was to use small envelopes (coin envelopes) to contain the seeds, label the envelopes and store them in wide-mouth quart mason jars with an inch or two of silica gel in the bottom. About 25 such packets to a quart jar seems to be optimal. Since I access the seeds periodically, I use more silica gel than they used in the research studies. The silica gel is blue and turns pink when it has absorbed moisture, so there is an easy indicator of when it's time to recharge the silica gel (which you can do by drying in an oven for a couple hours.) Note that heat is never a friend to seed preservation, but the literature on the subject indicates that seed drying is a better process for preservation than even the most advanced (and expensive) cryogenic storage. Apparently, even seeds cooled to near liquid nitrogen levels must be planted and their seeds harvested for re-freezing every decade or so to maintain viability. The research suggests that most seed banks around the world would benefit significantly from drying over super-freezing. Some seeds are NOT suitable for ultra-drying. They include seeds with very heavy, hard shells which may not allow the moisture to exit the seed. Fortunately, these types of seeds are relatively rare. So far, I've built my seed collection to nearly 100 different types of seeds. Rather than try to organize them into any specific order, I just label them with a name and a number, and use a database to match name/number for lookup. The jars all contain seed packets by number: 1-25 in the first jar, 26-50 in the second and so on. With a click of the mouse, I can view the seeds by name (with corresponding position in the appropriate jar) or number (which tells me which seeds are in a particular jar. I consider seed storage an important part of self-reliance, I grow a significant portion of my own produce, starting out after asking myself the question, "What would happen if the food supply system broke down?" and, "Why are peppers $1 each!?" What started as an experiment ("How much of my own food can I grow?") has become an interesting hobby and a source of superior produce. (I haven't bought a pepper in years!) The recent droughts already have experts predicting that food costs will double this year. With the dollar teetering on the edge of collapse, being able to grow your own food just seems prudent to me - and a stable supply of good seed is critical to that effort.

We've done a good deal of clearing over the years. There is a big difference in stripping out an old growth forest and clearing out brush and "weed" trees. Most places, its natural for young growth to "burn out" occasionally. Sucker and colony trees, like Quaking Aspen, live mostly underground and will actually benefit from burning out the area and removing competition. We found that the best way to handle stumps is to dig a deep hole (think 10 feet at least) and to push all the trees and brush into the hole with the stumps. The "earth" walls of the hole will insulate the fire and create a much hotter fire than a surface burn. This will significantly improve how much the brush and stumps burn down and shield the heat from surrounding flora (a hot surface burn can kill trees more than 20 feet away). After the burn, fill in all but the top foot or so and compacting with the excavator bucket every couple of feet; then return the top soil and lightly compact. You will still get a depression over the next few years from the final decomposition. I prefer to surface burn everything, then bury the stumps more than 6 feet deep. I even out the ash pile with a box scraper, then disc the soil before planting. You need to bury the stumps below the frost line or else the frost may eventually return them to the surface before they fully compost. As far as brush, remember the 2-2-2 rule; any branch or stick 2 inches or less in diameter within 2 inches of the ground should be decomposed within 2 years. If you don't fully burn your brush pile, the decomposition may rob the soil of nitrogen and you won't get the growth you'd expect from deep rooted plants. You can tell if your having too much decomposition if you dig a post hole and it smells like manure. Just to be safe I would plant an nitrogen fixing cover crop the first year. Talk to your conservation office to make sure the plants you put in aren't invasive in your area. Even native plants can be invasive or bad for your goals if left unchecked. Also make sure you check with your local conservation people to see if there are any local disease problems to look out for. For example, I love black cherry and its a good conservation tree for North Iowa, but my particular area has a lot of a black knot fungus that makes it a poor choice for dense planting.