Time to Take Leave of your Leaves

Fall brings many things, but one of the most vivid memories from our childhood days are those terrible moments when we were told to get up from a comfy couch on a Saturday and rake up the leaves.

In earlier, simpler times, all the hard work was concentrated in raking the leaves into giant piles, where they were soon to be disposed of by burning. But before the burn, the neighborhood children jumped and frolicked in the leaves, enjoying a kind of reward for their labors.

As usual, however, the adults could not abide all the fun, so they publicly banned the burning of leaves (they said it had something to do with air pollution, but we knew different), and from then on the current practice began of bagging the leaves - which quadrupled the onerousness of an already onerous job.

But - to get serious - leaf raking can be onerous, but it is also necessary. Leaves left on your turf block out the sunlight and fresh air needed by your fresh, growing grass.

And as the grass goes dormant, even darker things begin to happen under those leaves: trapped water and leaf mulch become a perfect breeding ground for molds and other plant diseases.

Incipient mold under leaves

As the weather gets colder, the leaf layer becomes a strong attractant for varmints of all types, who use the leaves for nests and a relative warmth, like this meadow vole:

This meadow vole might come foraging for your unraked leaves,
and stay to cause great damage to fruit trees and garden plants.

Worms too like beds of moist leaves during the cold months. Worms themselves are altogether not bad for a lawn, but worms attract moles, and moles ... well, we all know what moles can do to our turf.

As part of our winter preparation services (see also our irrigation winterization post, below), Ben's Creek Nursery offers leaf-removal, either as a one-time job or as part of an annual maintenance contract. We can take the onerous out of raking leaves! And leave you to your comfy couch on Saturday.

Call us for a free assessment and quote today!