Leave Your Leaves!

First, we will address the myth that if you do leave the leaves in your lawn, it will kill your grass and your plants. This is not true, especially if you use a lawn mower that can shred leaves into smaller pieces. If you have a mulching mower or a mulching attachment, that is best, but any mower will get the job done.

5 reasons you don’t need to rake

1. Leaving the leaves in your yard actually feeds the soil. The leaves will decompose, providing much needed nutrients for the grass, and the plants where the leaves have fallen, making it easier for your yard to survive the winter and thrive in the spring and summer! This will help you cut costs because you won’t need to buy as much fertilizer.
2. The leaves also provide a great habitat for the surrounding wildlife, including birds and beneficial insects that are necessary for a healthy landscape. Everything from birds, toads, turtles, caterpillars, moths, and a variety of other animals and insects depend on leaves for shelter, food, and nesting material. If you remove the leaves you remove the larva for beneficial insects (pollinators!) for the following year.
3. Leaves also provide a natural buffer to weed growth. Stop them before they start!
4. If you do not want to leave your leaves spread throughout your yard and would like a cleaner look for your landscape, you can rake/blow the leaves into your garden beds and around the trees or to the outer borders of your lawn.
5. Do you have a compost pile? Use some of the leaves from your yard in your compost as your “brown material” and mix it in with your kitchen waste and grass clipping throughout the winter.

By not raking leaves, you can save money, help the surrounding wildlife as well as your plants, support beneficial insects and spend more time with family! If you want to get really nerdy about it you can get a chipper/leaf vacuum attachment to your riding mower and shred the leaves, pile them and wait for them to turn into black gold for your garden beds. We’ve been known to collect leaf bags when people put them out in the fall, shred them, then put them in our compost piles.