Experts explain why you shouldn't rake your leaves

[Anonymous]

https://news.yahoo.com/good-news-dont-rake-leaves-100343709.html

Leaving at least some of the leaves in your yard can help fertilize your grass and other plants, provide shelter for animals and even reduce emissions from landfills....If the leaves on your lawn are forming a mat over your grass, experts...recommended placing leaves in garden beds or raking them into a bigger pile and letting them “naturally compost there and break down,”...or break them up with a lawnmower if you're expecting snow soon.

[Anonymous]

I guess, eventually, the leaves will decompose. For next Spring, you will have wet, clumpy leaves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://news.yahoo.com/good-news-dont-rake-leaves-100343709.html

Leaving at least some of the leaves in your yard can help fertilize your grass and other plants, provide shelter for animals and even reduce emissions from landfills....If the leaves on your lawn are forming a mat over your grass, experts...recommended placing leaves in garden beds or raking them into a bigger pile and letting them “naturally compost there and break down,”...or break them up with a lawnmower if you're expecting snow soon.

Leaves kill grass if left on top. However lawn is a bigger environmental disaster so maybe we should start there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess, eventually, the leaves will decompose. For next Spring, you will have wet, clumpy leaves.

If they are on your lawn mow them (but don't collect the clippings, do it bagless) and they will be chopped up so fine they'll decompose very quickly. Even if beds where I don't mow I don't find that they get too thick and clumpy. But even where they are in a layer they act as a mulch, and you need to mulch with brought-in mulch less. Its a win!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess, eventually, the leaves will decompose. For next Spring, you will have wet, clumpy leaves.

If they are on your lawn mow them (but don't collect the clippings, do it bagless) and they will be chopped up so fine they'll decompose very quickly. Even if beds where I don't mow I don't find that they get too thick and clumpy. But even where they are in a layer they act as a mulch, and you need to mulch with brought-in mulch less. Its a win!

This, and they are great fertilizer

[Anonymous]

We always raked them into flower beds as mulch when I was a child, so kept on doing that even in the dc area. Our neighbors seem to hate it, but we have so many birds and fireflies in our yard!

[Anonymous]

We have never raked and we have even discussed bagging other neighbors' discarded leaves to mow and use as mulch/compost. (Really, in MoCo your leaves are shredded and bagged to be sold at Home Depot! They're gold!) We don't have a lawn in our front yard but have grass on back and we mow the leaves in, everywhere else we just leave them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We always raked them into flower beds as mulch when I was a child, so kept on doing that even in the dc area. Our neighbors seem to hate it, but we have so many birds and fireflies in our yard!

Martha Stewart has a new book out, a collection of her “Good Things” and one of the suggestions in it is to bag up leaves in a jute bag (or plastic with a few holes), spray the leaves with water and set them in a shady location. They “melt” down into mulch by the next spring. I would love to have leaves in my flower beds providing some cover for the bare soil (I still have some bare spots, my bad), but too many seem to blow away. I might try this idea.

[Anonymous]

It's best to shred them before using them as mulch in a residential setting so they break down faster. Your yard isn't the forest and does't have the ecosystem. In a yard, you need worry about drainage and run off, and a mat of wet leaves can be impenetrable and problematic. Plus shredded leaves don't blow back into your yard.

In the past when we didn't shred, the leaves were untouched and intact in the spring, and the ground was soggy and the plants around them suffered from various fungi and molds. Now that we shred them, they become a part of the soil much faster and the soil is amazingly fertile and drains well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess, eventually, the leaves will decompose. For next Spring, you will have wet, clumpy leaves.

If they are on your lawn mow them (but don't collect the clippings, do it bagless) and they will be chopped up so fine they'll decompose very quickly. Even if beds where I don't mow I don't find that they get too thick and clumpy. But even where they are in a layer they act as a mulch, and you need to mulch with brought-in mulch less. Its a win!

Can a normal mower do this or do I need a mulch device with it.

[Anonymous]

If you shred the leaves does that destrpy the bug eggs? The Firefly and butterfly eggs ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://news.yahoo.com/good-news-dont-rake-leaves-100343709.html

Leaving at least some of the leaves in your yard can help fertilize your grass and other plants, provide shelter for animals and even reduce emissions from landfills....If the leaves on your lawn are forming a mat over your grass, experts...recommended placing leaves in garden beds or raking them into a bigger pile and letting them “naturally compost there and break down,”...or break them up with a lawnmower if you're expecting snow soon.

For those of us in, or close to, the city the most likely animals we'd be sheltering are rats.

Sorry rats, gonna rake!

[Anonymous]

Leaves don’t kill my lawn. We mulch over them in late fall and early spring.

I only rake the sidewalk, and the driveway so it doesn’t get slick

[Anonymous]

I guess it would work in some neighborhoods without many trees. It would not work in mine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess, eventually, the leaves will decompose. For next Spring, you will have wet, clumpy leaves.

If they are on your lawn mow them (but don't collect the clippings, do it bagless) and they will be chopped up so fine they'll decompose very quickly. Even if beds where I don't mow I don't find that they get too thick and clumpy. But even where they are in a layer they act as a mulch, and you need to mulch with brought-in mulch less. Its a win!

Can a normal mower do this or do I need a mulch device with it.

Normal mower will work fine.