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Right at the very bottom the article suggests the correct way to deal with fallen leaves: leave them alone. They decompose and provide nutrients to the grass.

by ssl232 3y ago

djha-skin 3y ago
So does the weed'n'feed I pay for, and it's much prettier.
lancesells 3y ago
I really don't understand moving leaves unless it's walkways and driveways. Fallen leaves are the ways trees work and have always worked.
blinkingled 3y ago
This right here. But then HOAs gotta have lawns which also take mowing most of the times by leisurely ridden gas mowers. The leaves on the lawn obstruct water and sunlight from getting to the roots of the lawn and makes the lawn look not green. So now you have to blow the leaves so you can mow the lawn or just mow the lawn to crush out the leaves. Either way there's double whammy of gas and noise ruining your weekends. The one thing that helped somewhat is replacing windows on my house - new windows seem a lot better at noise reduction. I am also seriously considering synthetic grass and getting rid of the stupid Oak trees on my lawn - I don't think those leaves decompose soon enough!
krupan 3y ago
If leaves are just left alone they cover your grass and kill it
jetpks 3y ago
i tried this with the 50 foot sycamore in my back yard and the leaves didn't decompose at all. they fell and froze. then in the spring when things thawed out, they formed a thick wet mat that suffocated and killed everything underneath.
- offtrail 3y ago
  Your lawn doesn't have a healthy fungal community. Probably because of lack of diversity in you lawn from years and years of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizer use.
  - votepaunchy 3y ago
    One can walk in an Eastern deciduous forest and see that the leaves never fully decompose, despite the lack of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizer.
raisedbyninjas 3y ago
Mulching leaves with a mower would deal with them just fine in many cases. The landscaper in the article doesn't need to cancel all of his fall cleanup contracts. Areas with dense oak trees however, might have so many leaves mulching would choke out the grass.
- xoa 3y ago
  >Areas with dense oak trees however, might have so many leaves mulching would choke out the grass. Surprisingly not, it's actually pretty amazing how massive blankets of dried fallen leaves will get chomped down into a tiny tiny thin layer of powder when mulching, at least when using a sufficiently powerful mower to do a good job of it. I've got maybe 50 acres, mostly dense forest with lots of oaks/maples and then some lawn (more regularly mowed hay field) around main buildings. Before I had one I used to rake (or eventually blow) up leaves and cart them off leaving only some. Getting a quality mulching setup was a revelation (for leave and grass too for that matter). Better for the environment, less messy, and more convenient. Still use an (electric) blower though to gather leaves onto lawn areas from other places for mulching, and in some cases to help spread the leaves out beyond the areas near forest so that they'll add nutrients elsewhere. But once everything is piled as I want onto lawn can just mulch it, though everything in the hay fields can just sit over the winter of course. So I think there really is no downside, it's all upside, and it can all be electric as well. Just a matter of putting the pieces together with the right incentives, which is something that looks plenty politically feasible.
jejeyyy77 3y ago
If you have a few leaves, sure. If you've got more than 1 tree that shit will pile up, clump together, and form a layer of slimy leaves that won't break down for years.
everybodyknows 3y ago
FTA: > shred most leaves with a mower, leaving them strewn on the lawn as mulch. The shredding is a necessary step. Of course, this too is generally done by power equipment ...
downut 3y ago
One year ago, in November, I bought a house in GA after 40 years in the West, and it's got a bunch of Ents on a 1/2 acre lot. Upon moving in I had no tools to deal with the leaves, and the house had been unmaintained all Fall, so the leaves had piled up everywhere but importantly, on top of the "grass". I have a long concrete driveway also, and the piles of leaves were kind of annoying there. Raking was... suboptimal. All my life I have hated leaf blowers with all my being, reserving a special place in that hatred for the landscapers working in the middle of the night in Santa Clara on commercial property. However I have friends who don't share that hatred and as a surprise housewarming gift I received in Dec. a 20V battery electric leaf blower. My gawd that thing works great, and it's not very loud, takes 10 minutes, so problem solved for the driveway, deck, steps etc. As for the "grass"[1], wherever the leaves had piled up and matted down after the rains, nothing grew. It was just mud. I'm not interested in leaf blowing a half acre so after researching it I got a Honda mulching lawnmower. I mulched for the first time last week. Worked great! This week the leaves have piled up again. I'll keep mulching until the accumulation wanes but I'm optimistic I'll have more "grass", and less mud, next year. I retain my intense hatred for gas powered leaf blowers. I've got a neighbor across the lake and that mutherfucker likes to blow his deck for I swear to god an hour once a week with a tremendously noisy gas blower. Visions of setting the thing on fire. Maybe I should buy him an electric leaf blower. He also has a very noisy Harley and one of those extraordinarily loud Mustang adjacent cars, so possibly that would be a fail. Oh well. [1] "grass" Well there's some grassy stuff most places, and it looks like dozens of other species of ground covering plants. All fine with us, what I care about is cover and not growing too fast.

Right at the very bottom the article suggests the correct way to deal with fallen leaves: leave them alone. They decompose and provide nutrients to the grass.

by ssl232 3y ago

Right at the very bottom the article suggests the correct way to deal with fallen leaves: leave them alone. They decompose and provide nutrients to the grass.

djha-skin 3y ago

So does the weed'n'feed I pay for, and it's much prettier.

lancesells 3y ago

I really don't understand moving leaves unless it's walkways and driveways. Fallen leaves are the ways trees work and have always worked.

blinkingled 3y ago

This right here. But then HOAs gotta have lawns which also take mowing most of the times by leisurely ridden gas mowers. The leaves on the lawn obstruct water and sunlight from getting to the roots of the lawn and makes the lawn look not green. So now you have to blow the leaves so you can mow the lawn or just mow the lawn to crush out the leaves. Either way there's double whammy of gas and noise ruining your weekends. The one thing that helped somewhat is replacing windows on my house - new windows seem a lot better at noise reduction. I am also seriously considering synthetic grass and getting rid of the stupid Oak trees on my lawn - I don't think those leaves decompose soon enough!

krupan 3y ago

If leaves are just left alone they cover your grass and kill it

jetpks 3y ago

i tried this with the 50 foot sycamore in my back yard and the leaves didn't decompose at all. they fell and froze. then in the spring when things thawed out, they formed a thick wet mat that suffocated and killed everything underneath.

offtrail 3y ago
Your lawn doesn't have a healthy fungal community. Probably because of lack of diversity in you lawn from years and years of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizer use.
- votepaunchy 3y ago
  One can walk in an Eastern deciduous forest and see that the leaves never fully decompose, despite the lack of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizer.

raisedbyninjas 3y ago

Mulching leaves with a mower would deal with them just fine in many cases. The landscaper in the article doesn't need to cancel all of his fall cleanup contracts. Areas with dense oak trees however, might have so many leaves mulching would choke out the grass.

xoa 3y ago
>Areas with dense oak trees however, might have so many leaves mulching would choke out the grass. Surprisingly not, it's actually pretty amazing how massive blankets of dried fallen leaves will get chomped down into a tiny tiny thin layer of powder when mulching, at least when using a sufficiently powerful mower to do a good job of it. I've got maybe 50 acres, mostly dense forest with lots of oaks/maples and then some lawn (more regularly mowed hay field) around main buildings. Before I had one I used to rake (or eventually blow) up leaves and cart them off leaving only some. Getting a quality mulching setup was a revelation (for leave and grass too for that matter). Better for the environment, less messy, and more convenient. Still use an (electric) blower though to gather leaves onto lawn areas from other places for mulching, and in some cases to help spread the leaves out beyond the areas near forest so that they'll add nutrients elsewhere. But once everything is piled as I want onto lawn can just mulch it, though everything in the hay fields can just sit over the winter of course. So I think there really is no downside, it's all upside, and it can all be electric as well. Just a matter of putting the pieces together with the right incentives, which is something that looks plenty politically feasible.

jejeyyy77 3y ago

If you have a few leaves, sure. If you've got more than 1 tree that shit will pile up, clump together, and form a layer of slimy leaves that won't break down for years.

everybodyknows 3y ago

FTA: > shred most leaves with a mower, leaving them strewn on the lawn as mulch. The shredding is a necessary step. Of course, this too is generally done by power equipment ...

downut 3y ago

One year ago, in November, I bought a house in GA after 40 years in the West, and it's got a bunch of Ents on a 1/2 acre lot. Upon moving in I had no tools to deal with the leaves, and the house had been unmaintained all Fall, so the leaves had piled up everywhere but importantly, on top of the "grass". I have a long concrete driveway also, and the piles of leaves were kind of annoying there. Raking was... suboptimal. All my life I have hated leaf blowers with all my being, reserving a special place in that hatred for the landscapers working in the middle of the night in Santa Clara on commercial property. However I have friends who don't share that hatred and as a surprise housewarming gift I received in Dec. a 20V battery electric leaf blower. My gawd that thing works great, and it's not very loud, takes 10 minutes, so problem solved for the driveway, deck, steps etc. As for the "grass"[1], wherever the leaves had piled up and matted down after the rains, nothing grew. It was just mud. I'm not interested in leaf blowing a half acre so after researching it I got a Honda mulching lawnmower. I mulched for the first time last week. Worked great! This week the leaves have piled up again. I'll keep mulching until the accumulation wanes but I'm optimistic I'll have more "grass", and less mud, next year. I retain my intense hatred for gas powered leaf blowers. I've got a neighbor across the lake and that mutherfucker likes to blow his deck for I swear to god an hour once a week with a tremendously noisy gas blower. Visions of setting the thing on fire. Maybe I should buy him an electric leaf blower. He also has a very noisy Harley and one of those extraordinarily loud Mustang adjacent cars, so possibly that would be a fail. Oh well. [1] "grass" Well there's some grassy stuff most places, and it looks like dozens of other species of ground covering plants. All fine with us, what I care about is cover and not growing too fast.