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BIRMINGHAM, Mich. - Many gardens are just about tucked in for the season. But in Peter and Anne Bray's yard, late fall is the busiest time of the year.

Peter Bray prowls their Birmingham neighborhood, plucking bags of dry leaves from curbside and stashing them into his gray station wagon. Back home, he shreds and incorporates the leaves into his garden beds and compost piles.

"Your neighbors bag them up for you and put them on the curb. It would be churlish not to pick them up," says Bray, who accumulates about 50 bags of leaves each season and shreds them down to 20.

This organic gardener's autumnal leaf work is part of how he ensures that the soil on which he depends all growing season stays productive and fertile.

Bray lets some leaves feed the trees by staying where they fall and returning nutrients to the soil as they decompose, as they do in nature. It's an approach that works well in the natural landscaping Anne Bray has developed in their backyard.

Peter Bray also stores bagged leaves for later use in the compost piles, which requires regular infusions of carbon - the necessary brown to blend with the green in things like nitrogen-rich grass clippings. Carbon is most plentiful in fall, but compost piles need it all year. So some bags of leaves are reserved for next spring and summer.

Other leaves, after a trip through the Brays' gas-powered shredder, are added to beds as mulch. This conserves soil moisture, discourages weed germination and makes any weeds that do grow easier to pull. It also keeps the soil cool and encourages beneficial organisms.

As a natural mulch, shredded leaves are "quite superior. The worms really lap it up," says Peter Bray. For proof, pull back the leaf mulch and look at the soil, which will be covered with that premier natural fertilizer - worm castings.

Another way Bray uses leaves is in sheet composting. Some people define that as spreading material on the soil and leaving it to decompose there. Bray, however, has better results incorporating the leaves and other organic material into the soil: His ingredients include a {-inch layer of compost, mineral dusts and a few other organic products. Then he spreads a thin layer of shredded leaves and works it all into the top few inches of soil. Too thick a layer or leaves worked in too deeply will just sit there, "indigested" as Bray puts it.

Bray also mixes what he calls a magic potion of organic cider vinegar, 20 Mule Team Borax, blackstrap molasses and water in a watering can and sprinkles the mixture evenly over the plot. The vinegar and boron were recommended from a soil test.

"The molasses is for the decay system. It really makes the bacteria jump. I need all the help I can get, having just put the leaves in there," he says. Then he applies another 2-inch layer of shredded leaves, a top dressing that will stay in place for the winter to prevent the soil from crusting and to encourage microbial action.

"You've got a ranch with all the soil bacteria, fungi and protozoa. Your business is to look after that, and they'll take care of the rest," says Bray, who teaches occasional classes and writes about organic gardening techniques for master gardener newsletters and other publications. The Brays have been gardening organically for about 30 years, ever since Anne Bray brought home an issue of Organic Gardening magazine. At that time, their main concern was pesticide residue and how to avoid it. They started studying soil health, composting and eventually native plants. Over the years, they have eliminated nearly all the turf in their yard.

Peter Bray, a retired financial manager at an auto company, and Anne Bray, who is retired from the travel industry, moved to the United States in 1968 from England. Since their entry into organics, they have tried, where possible, to streamline gardening activities, like ways of composting so the pile doesn't require frequent turning.

They have also rid their yard of needy exotic plants and replaced them with natives, which require less care and watering once established.

"We actually have time to sit in the garden now," says Anne Bray.