A thick layer of leaves in your garden prevents it from absorbing air, nutrients and sunlight. As it becomes more difficult for air, water, sunlight and nutrients to reach the grass root system, lawns can develop diseases, cause floods, or even attract pests. Twenty years ago, fresh out of college with a degree in horticulture, I started teaching adult education classes at a local botanical garden. For many years, I taught a class called Preparing Your Garden for Winter.
It was about how to clean the garden every fall. It would show slides (remember them?) Of how well-kept gardens should look in January. In the images, all the plants were cut to the bottom, except for ornamental grasses and butterfly shrubs, and the entire garden was set under a thick layer of mushroom soil mulch. The roses were neatly trimmed to two feet and wrapped in a burlap blanket, folded and fastened with staples to keep them protected from icy winds.
There wasn't a single fallen leaf in sight; everything was raked and dragged. The leaves are a natural habitat for butterflies, salamanders, squirrels, box turtles, toads, shrews, earthworms and others. They lay eggs on leaves and feed on and under the leaf layer. By raking or blowing the leaves, their life cycle is interrupted and beneficial insects are eliminated.
At more than 5 acres, cleaning a small bed doesn't seem to harm the insect population much %26 my beds work much better the following year with an occasional cleaning. Or if you want to accelerate decomposition, place shredded leaves in your compost bin and you'll have rich compost to use in your garden next year. For example, shredded leaves are the perfect mulch to use on perennial beds before winter arrives; place them in layers about four inches thick, but don't cover plant tops. Go a step further and read Before you clean up plant debris, consider the benefits of a messy patio.
If you remove the leaves, the best thing to do is to cut them and drop them on a plant, flower bed, or other part of the grass that doesn't cover the leaves, Mizejewski said. This can quickly kill grass if leaves are not collected for several weeks and create a breeding ground for certain insects and pests. I like to prepare most of my vegetable beds (which don't grow during the winter) in the fall with compost and straw mulch, after cleaning the previous crops, so that they are ready for planting in early spring. We also have a lot of ticks here in Pennsylvania, and I haven't noticed an increase in ticks since I stopped cleaning my gardens in the fall about 8 years ago.
Trees usually lose their leaves between October and November, so this is the recommended time to get a service like, Gutter Cleaning Santa Rosa, to remove the leaves that has fallen to your roof and gutters safely. What does not decompose during the winter can be cleaned in spring (if you want) and the volume of the leaves will be reduced considerably. The biggest problem I have with not cleaning are all the unwanted trees that sprout invisibly from my golden rain tree and the oak tree across the street. Ellis recommends using the lawnmower to cut leaves into smaller pieces, which won't get as tangled, break down faster, and won't take up as much space as whole leaves.
Tree leaves that have accumulated to this level on grass would not be practical to cover with mulch in the lawn canopy. Some people like to wait until all the leaves fall off in their garden to be able to fix it in a big cleaning, but this isn't the best solution. Another option you have is to compost the leaves, but you simply can't rake all the leaves in a large pile and expect them to turn into compost on their own. .
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