Fall is a glorious time where the leaves change to magnificent hues of red, orange, brown and yellow. It also means that a lawn task awaits: raking leaves. Depending on the size of your yard and how many trees you have, this can seem like a daunting task. It doesn’t have to be, though.
One trick I like to use to make leaf raking easier is to lay a tarp on the ground. You can rake leaves on top of it and easily drag it around to other spots in your lawn. Once you are done you can bag them up to be hauled away or used in your garden. The latter is nice because you have one less thing to toss in the trash.
Making Leaf Mulch
Did you know that one of the best mulches for your garden is free? Leaves are full of nutrients and can be reused to make a leaf mulch that will help your garden plants stay safe during the cooler times of the year and benefit from the organic matter as the leaves naturally decompose.
First, you want to try and help your leaves break down faster. An easy way to do this is to run over the leaves with your mower while they are still on the ground. This will chop them up into pieces. You can bag them up to save for later, use them to mulch some of your plants to protect them through the winter, or simply add them to a compost pile.
A note of caution: not every leaf is suitable for use as mulch. A prominent example is the black walnut tree. This species produces a substance called juglone that actively works to harm other plants around it. You certainly don’t want something like that in your mulch or compost!
If you are ready for us to start raking leaves in your lawn, give us a call today. We would be happy to help.
Image by wickenden under a Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
