So it is late fall now here in the northwest and of course there are leaves falling everywhere. I live in a very rural place (2 1/2 to 5 acre lots–heavily wooded) and I see some of my neighbors out there raking and blowing their leaves around. Everyday, they clean it up and the next day it is the same!
For what purpose? To be honest I have never (or rarely) raked the leaves in any of the homes I have had, and I never have seen any side effects from it. My grass looks fine the next year so it doesn’t seem to harm the grass. Leaves fall naturally in the woods and decompose don’t they? The only impact I can see is aesthetic, or am I missing something? Most of my property is composed of trees with the vast majority being various pines but there are a few trees that drop leaves. There is only a small portion of the property that has lawn and there are leaves on it. When I mow, they get all chopped up and I figure they act like mulch. Or the wind eventually takes care of them and they blow away.
No one can see my yard as it is down a long wooded driveway, so is there a reason other then aesthetics to rake them?
On a similar note–I work in downtown Seattle and the street trees are dropping tons of leaves. The adjacent building owners tend to use these large vacuums to suck them all up so people don’t slip on them. But man it seems like a never ending task, they vacuum them up the next day the street is filled again. Couldn’t they just use a machine and vacuum them off the tree and be done with it? Or does the tree get some benefit to naturally dropping them in due course?
Just curious more then anything. Clearly green stuff isn’t my forte, I leave that to my lovely wife.
Oh I understand in the city picking them up as they also pose a slipping hazard. It rains so much here that the leaves left on the sidewalks become very slippery. But then why don’t they just vacuum them off the tree directly and get it all done in one day rather then take many weeks to let them fall naturally and you also then don’t have to vacuum up wet leaves. They are going to fall off the trees anyways! It must cause some trauma to the tree is all I can guess.
Out where I live though I can’t see what purpose getting them out of my yard serves.
They’d have to vacuum their upwind neighbors trees as well, and their upwind neighbors upwind neighbors.
I’ve never understood why people start raking leaves so early.
It’s like shoveling the first half inch of snow off the front walk, when you know there’s a blizzard on the way.
We drive around on a lawn tractor and grind them up. Not because we want them off the yard, but because we otherwise would be purchasing mulch for flower beds and such. Last weekend I actually drove around one of the horse pastures picking up leaves, as the yard was devoid!
Some people still bag their grass clippings. It’s more work, so it has to be good, right? I guess the belief is that it reduces thatch, although I’ve heard leaving the clippings on the lawn actually helps reduce thatch. It certainly doesn’t cause it.
Our soil doesn’t have enough organic matter, so I’ve gone and collected leaves, spread them on our lawn, and mowed them in.
I bag my clippings because I don’t have a mulching mower, nor is a mulching kit available for it (the tractor). So: I bag. Grass clippings are ugly, and they tend to clot up and cause the grass under the mounds to die. The rechargeable push mower that I use for edge work is a mulching mower, and as such, I don’t bag.
Leaves do that same thing as clumps of grass. If you don’t get them up, the stay matted to the ground, and kill whatever’s growing under them. I don’t get a lot of leaves, but I prefer to mow them into pieces while bagging, rather than let them clump. If my main mower were a mulcher, I’d just mulch them on the spot.
You can build up thatch with a mulching mower. My yard is proof of it; it requires one really good raking per year to clear it out or else I start to get dead patches which are buried under a matte of dead grass. However, that’s still less work than bagging all the time.
I have total respect for you, but… have you considered all of the potential causes for thatch? I mean, are you sure it’s because of your mulching mower?
No, I mean, I haven’t done a scientific study of it, but I fear that I’m not sure what else it could be. The thatch is made up of matted dead grass which seems to be cut. What are some other options?
shrug. I rake the leaves because I want to have a lawn there, not a forest understory. My yard is under a number of mature oak trees. I get a thick carpet of leaves every fall, and then again in the spring because of marcescence. If I don’t rake, the leaves turn into a wet occlusive layer about an inch thick that blocks the light, killing the grass. That thick layer persists well into the next summer. If I drive over them with the mulching mower, they turn into a wet paste which blocks the light, killing the grass. There is an obvious difference between the areas that I rake and the areas that I don’t rake: the raked area is a lawn and the unraked area has forest plants, year-round oak leaf litter, and no grass. They’re useful as mulch, if by mulch you mean ‘something I put down to keep stuff from growing there’.
As for vacuuming leaves off of trees - I had to laugh at that one. I don’t have a 60 foot ladder to get to the treetops around here.
If the leaves don’t completely cover the ground, or you don’t care about keeping the grass alive, then don’t bother with raking them. I don’t rake until they’re two or three inches deep so that I only have to do it two or three times a year. If it’s going to rain, though, I’ll rake them earlier because once they get wet they’re a bitch to get rid of. They aren’t all that great for my compost pile, either – well, the first tarpful is, but after that they just skew the C:N ratio way too far toward C.
No what I am saying is there a horticultural reason for raking them up as opposed to just raking them to make your yard pretty. Here in the northwest we get lots of rain so they get slick, so I could see if you lived somewhere that had sidewalks you would want to rake them up so someone wouldn’t slip. Or if you live somewhere where it freezes again that makes sense.
I was trying to see if there was a horticultural reason such as if you don’t rake them you get moss growing, or a dead spot or ?? I could imagine in some locations you would get enough to make a thick layer. Here in the northwest I have a few leaves but nothing worth troubling myself over in my opinion. I haven’t seen any ill effects to my lawn and I have lived up this way for 20 years, yet I still see people doing it. So that is what prompted the question.
Well that comment was more tongue in cheek. But in downtown Seattle the trees are only 30-40 feet tall and 3 or 4 trees on each side of the street but man they produce alot of leaves! I thought it would be cool to have a long handled vacuum that sucked them off, and it would save a lot of hassle it seems! But it was more tongue in cheek then anything.
This is what I do. I have a mulching mower, and I’m amazed that it can handle a dense covering of leaves . . . even if they’re not dry. The only thing I use my leaf blower for is tidying up the driveway and sidewalk. My neighbors rake/blow their leaves and pile them on the curb to be picked up, but by that time they’ve blown back onto the lawn.
At least one tree disease, marssonia leaf spot on Aspen trees, passes the winter on the dead leaves. That makes it a good idea to clean up the dead leaves.
Black Walnut leaves will have juglone which inhibits types of plant growth. A desired result for the tree but could be desired or not by you with your leaf use/disposal (a weed mulch might be a good use, a plant moisture mulch wouldn’t be [unless you wanted to inhibit the plant]).
Oak leaves are acidic and you would want to place and use where you could handle that.
I have about 22 fucking oak trees in my yard that spit leaves all over the place. I rent a house from a local association, and they have a giant yard out back. Thankfully, they bring the sucking machine (the technical term) and suck up all the leaves each year, or I would kill myself.
