The Real Reason To Rake Leaves Off Your Lawn: Whoever said life is about the little things had clearly sipped on a pumpkin-spiced latte while watching the leaves from a red maple tree float down onto the lawn, resting there in all its glory. There’s just nothing quite like it; the taste of autumn filling your mouth as your grass becomes a pretty carpet of gold, bronze, yellow and burnt orange leaves. And that’s only half the reason you’re probably wondering whether you need to break out the rake and clear them up. The other half is the effort required to rake every leaf off your lawn. Urgh.
Well, for those of you that also said urgh at the thought of raking up leaves, we have some good news: you don’t have to. For one, no one is going to make you (we don’t think) and secondly, there are some studies that suggest it might even be better for the environment to leave them where gravity took them. However, in most cases, raking the leaves off your grass is pretty important for the health of your lawn.
The Benefits of Picking Up Your Rake
There’s a lot of benefits to raking leaves off your lawn, like a lot, but the most important them all is all to do with your lawn’s ability to grow. Yep. Raking up any fallen leaves will actually help your grass grow. That’s because a thick layer of leaves covering your grass will deprive it of some essential stuff, like sunlight, which grass needs to thrive and survive, especially given cool-season grass types are most active in autumn, which is when they “make hay” and strengthen their roots.
Luckily, this doesn’t mean you have to hunt down every last fallen leaf you can find and then bag it up. Nah. Having a few leaves here and there won’t do any damage to your lawn. In fact, we recommend leaving a few around and then going over them with your mower, mulching them in a way that will add some much needed nutrients to your soil.
Oh yeah, as for the other benefits of picking up your rake, they include:
- Getting a little dollop of exercise, fresh air and time amongst nature.
- Breaking up that layer of thatch sat at the top of your soil.
- Reducing the chance of disease-ridden leaves spreading to your lawn.
- Keeping your home looking nice and neat in time for the busy Christmas period when people are bound to be coming over for your famous mulled wine.
The Best Time To Rake Your Lawn
Now. Like, right now. Like, there’s no time like the present kind of now. But in case that’s too ambiguous, we recommend raking up your fallen leaves at least once a week until the first frost settles, while they’re still dry. Not only will this make it easier for you to complete the mission, it will also prevent diseases from having a chance to do their thing.
Best Thing To Do With The Leaves
The physical act of going to your shed, trying to find your rake and actually raking up the fallen leaves on your lawn is just half the task. The next half is about doing something with your leaves. Our advice: mulch them.
Now that can be done by composting them by adding them to your compost pile and then leaving them to decompose, or you can chop up your dry fallen leaves by going over them with your mower. This should shred them up so finely, they are almost invisible to the human eye as they slot between your lawn’s grass blades and feed nutrients into the soil. Not that you have to add them to your lawn. You could catch your shredded leaves in your mower bag and then add them around your plantings to insulate them or even work them into your vegetable planters as a way of feeding them extra nutrients.
And if none of these options take your fancy, you could always send your kids-slash-grandkids into the garden to collect the best leaves they can find and then turn them into some very cute pieces of artwork.
The ‘Fair Enough’ Reasons Not To Rake Your Leaves
Let’s say you’re feeling a little too cosy in your cable-knit pyjamas to go outside and rake up the leaves. Well, you can take solace in the fact you might be doing the environment a favour. Yepp. Letting go of your perfectly manicured lawn and allowing those fallen leaves to stay where nature left them means saving innocent animals and the environment. That’s because fallen leaves help return essential nutrients to the grass and soil, while the coverage preserves moisture in the soil and suppresses weeds.
But here’s the real jackpot: birds, toads and insects like butterflies kind of depend on the fallen leaves for things like nesting materials, food and even shelter throughout the freezing cold winter months, so that creatures like caterpillars can re-emerge as beautiful butterflies in the spring. Basically, the choice is yours.
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