What to Do with Fall Leaves

September 22, 2010, By Charles Manley 0 comments

Looking out at your beautifully manicured lawn covered in dead foliage can be disheartening. Dealing with leaves during the fall season is often an exhausting and irritating experience. The raking. The bagging. The blowing. All that work just to pay the city or a private company to collect it all from your curb.

Even though you might not believe it, leaves are a valuable natural resource. Throwing them away is like throwing away money.

When I was a student at Michigan State University, I worked with a student in the turfgrass management program. After complaining about having to rake up leaves in my front yard, he pointed me toward several studies conducted by the university.

The school was looking at the possibility of mulching leaf litter into the turf, reducing the costs and environmental pollution caused by burning, composting or simply removing it. One of the studies even went so far as to drown the grass in 450 pounds of mulched leaves per 1,000 square feet, a layer 18 inches deep!

After nearly a decade of experimentation, the studies concluded that leaf mulching "provides benefits for the soil and the turfgrass plant" and "provided a softer surface." The study also found that the percentage of carbon and nitrogen increased in the soil, and maintained a safe ratio even without the use of additional fertilizer.

How to Mulch Leaves into Your Lawn

• When the leaves start falling, don't wait for them to collect and form a thick layer. Mow before they fully cover the lawn. While tree leaves are full of nutrients that replenish the soil, their mass chokes out the tree's many competitors. Mulching the leaves allows them to be incorporated into the soil more quickly before they choke out the grass.
• When the fallen leaves are dry, set the blade of a regular rotary lawnmower to about 3 inches. Then slowly mulch the leaves with the lawnmower. If you have a large amount of leaves, it may take several passes before the leaves are chopped small enough. You should be able to see the top of the grass when you are finished.
• If the layer of mulch is fairly thick, place the excess around the base of the tree or spread it around in flower beds. After it rains, the mulch will no longer be noticeable.
• Different tree species lose their leaves at different times. Generally a yard with a mixture of trees will have three periods where trees drop their leaves. If you mulch the leaves as they fall, you'll never have to use a rake again.