FALL LEAVES

I just finished my fall leaf routine.  No, not raking and bagging.  That's for suckers who either are pathetic creatures of habit, desperately in need of exercise or are woefully uninformed.

Raking a bagging strains muscles and strains the local landfill.  Those bags of leaves become large clumps of leaves that take forever to decompose.  The smart way is to mulch them and leave them on your lawn.  This  feeds the lawn with valuable nitrogen and other nutrients and provides important weed control next spring.

I recommend this article to you.

Mulching leaves into lawns better than raking them

By Dean Fosdick - The Associated Press

November 18, 2004

New Market, Va. — Mike Goatley is the kind of guy couch potatoes appreciate most on football-rich fall afternoons. The Virginia Tech extension turf specialist preaches the gospel of "leave them alone" lawn leaf management.
There's nothing wrong with blowing, vacuuming or raking downed leaves -- especially if you're trying to spot errant golf balls or keep your grass from being matted down over winter. Disposal is the problem.
"One of the biggest things we're trying to get away from is putting these things in bags and dumping them in a landfill," Goatley says. "At the same time, you're improving the organic matter in your soil." The technique has been used for years, he says. But "there's quite a bit of data out there now (from Purdue, Michigan State and Cornell universities) indicating this is the way to manage those leaves." In other words, crank up your mulching-capable lawn mower first when the leaves start piling up in autumn.
A Purdue University report details the responses of a perennial ryegrass lawn to the addition of as much as two tons of maple leaves per acre per application. Mowing the leaves into fine pieces and filtering them through the turf doesn't degrade lawn color or quality, introduce diseases or weeds, the report says. Over time, the shredded leaves decompose, enriching the topmost soil layers. Mower mulching also saves time and money that would be unnecessarily spent on bagging and dumping. Composting leaves directly into the turf doesn't mean you should stop fertilizing, however.
"I don't think leaf recycling is a substitute for a sound fertilizing program," Goatley says. "Mother Nature has already removed a lot of nitrogen from those leaves. The microbes needed to further break them down also need some nitrogen.


You can read the entire article at: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2004/nov/18/mulching_leaves_into/?print

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