You Still Rake Leaves?

It is that time of year. Weather has changed for the cooler and you have a bunch of leaves in your yard. Are you really going to want to spend time raking them? Probably not. There are various ways to handle leaves when the season change.

Let Leaves Leave

That's right. You can leave them in the yard and eventually they will blow into the street, decompose, or blow into the neighbors yard on their own. I took this approach one season and all was good during the winter time. However, when the weather started getting warmer, the grass was not growing. Come to find out, the leaves have smothered the grass during the winter. Thus resulting the grass dying completely and weeds taking over like they had nothing else to do. This is an approach that I would not recommend, especially if you like to have a lush, green lawn.

Blow Them Away

I have one neighbor that blows all of his leaves from his yard to the curb. Then the city will come by and scoop them up with other tree, limb, and other debris. In turn, the city uses those leaves for mulch, compost, or other projects around the city like in parks or roadside greenways.

Chop It Up

This is my preferred method. Pull out the lawn mower and mulch the leaves. In years past, I've mulched them and left them on the ground to decompose. This helps return the nutrients that were removed from the soil, to go back into the soil. Also prevents the need to bag the leaves, which means more work. I rarely bag leaves, as it adds unnecessarily to the landfill. If you have a compost pile, leaves are good brown material that can be added to the pile.

Get Hustled

If you have kids that go around the neighborhood looking to do yard work, then outsource it to them. Be sure to pay them reasonably for their efforts.