When Autumn Leaves Take Over

Trees are one of Mother Nature's most soulful creations. A big one, a hundred year old one has seen a lot -somehow-and can seem animate. My little grandson at 2 would embrace the giant oak in the backyard and put his ear to it. I have seen owls and hawks in it, an army of squirrels. It makes a delightful sound in the breeze. But then there is autumn and here come the leaves. I do not exaggerate when reporting that this beautiful tree , more than 2 stories high, makes over 90 bags of leaves. And they do not fall cleanly. Many oaks " hold " a large percentage of their leaves until spring. I have to pay someone to come over and over . They go in the gutters. They go in the pool. They go in the back yard and front yard and the driveway and into the street. And of course they go to the neighbors. I do not where people live who say " Ignore them ." My neighbors are nice; they do not ignore theirs. We view it as a shared responsibility. Younger people do it themselves week after week. Older people get a service. Left they will kill the grass, clog the gutters, shelter ticks, fleas, mice, rats, infuriate the neighborhood. You just have to commit to the mission one way or another.

I used to pick up all the leaves, bag and leave them on the curb for the town to pick up. In the spring, I would drive to the garden center and buy bags of mulch and bring the stuff back. Then it dawned on me that I should just mulch the leaves using my lawnmower and put it in my flower beds, vegetable patch and around my scrubs and eliminate the middle man. The result is a healthy lawn, weed free beds and nutritious soil, all for free. And the bonus is that I don't subject my neighbors to the awful noise and pollution the gas leaf blowers emit. By their design, 2 cycle engines that are used in gas leaf blowers aerosolize 1 quart of unburned gas/oil into the atmosphere for us to breath. Because of this, many towns and villages are restricting their use.

Amen to those who hate the leafblowers! Stony Brook is basically "scorched earth" all year long now because of them, They don't just drive the neighbors crazy, they will ultimate drive them Away, as I am desperately trying to figure out how I can buy as many acres as possible as far away as possible from any maintained area..... I hope Ms. Sinha and others who use the landscaping companies will consider the environmental and health effects of the gas blowers and, if they must have the leaves removed, ask that the workers use electric blowers or better yet those good old fashioned rakes which never need refueling and have no emissions!

I remember a famous line in England about rail delays because of "the wrong kind of leaves on the tracks."

What about leaf mold? I’d always thought that leaving leaves to rot produces mold and bacteria, a problem for those with asthma and allergies.

The last thing I want is to provide a home for little critters in my back yard.

"I have is a soggy mess". You've also got a dead lawn. Oh, and I live in Jersey City as well and I have a lawn. Each fall I rake the leaves and use them as mulch for the raised bed where I just planted next year's garlic crop.

The American obsession with lawns is sick and the cause of much of the pollution of the water. My lawn? Whatever happens to grow, I only mow to keep it at a reasonable length. When I neglected it one of my dogs was bitten by a diamondback snake hiding in the grass. That was expensive for anti- venom shots.

It's fine to leave dead leaves in your garden beds and in wooded areas of your property. They will decompose and will enrich the soil. The key is that they have to be mulched, and that is why I purchased my Honda double bladed mulching mower. But let them lay on your lawn unmulched or mulched over the winter and you will have nothing but dead grass in spring.

The cacophony of leaf blowers blasting away in my suburban town this time of year is, to me, an indicator of the tyranny of conformity, indeed neurosis. To maintain one's status as a responsible home owner, one must exhibit a lawn in total greenness at all times. (Although I haven't noticed anyone blow-torching the snow away – yet). Almost everyone uses leaf blowers to rid their lawns of the very last leaf, or worse, hires a lawn service to do so. The military could take a lesson from the lawn services who arrive in force with a variety of leaf blowers, some so heavy they are mounted on wheels. Cars are required to employ mufflers to stifle the sound emanating from their exhaust, not so leaf blowers. When the lawn services blow en masse it must be 150 db, i.e. deafening (literally). We actually use rakes to fulfill our duty to suburban conformity, thus feeling superior to our leaf-blowing neighbors. Being the type who exercise regularly, raking leaves on a sunny, brisk day is a lot more enjoyable than spending time within the confines of a public gym. Even if it sounds like over-generalization, I say leaf-blowers suck. I hike in the woods regularly, which has led me to wonder where do all the leaves there go ? They are, of course, noticeable when they are fresh fallen, but by summer they disappear. Is that a lesson that we should leave the leaves on our lawns ? Also, blowing the leaves into the street for the town to remove, produces dangers besides ugly messes.

I have gone through a real change over the years. I used to rake and send to city composting. Now I simply sweep off sidewalks and let them be. The rains (such as they are) tamp them down and, since we no longer have lawns in Oakland, they rot and help make the clay soil more manageable. This is easy and beautiful--in my eyes.

The stems supporting multiple walnut leaves fall to the ground long after the leaves have blown away. These stems are relatively heavy and do not blow away. They lie to close to the ground to be mulched by a rotary lawn mower. If not raked away, the walnut stems are toxic to grass and whatever other plants that might be desirable under the tree in the following spring.

What could be done to rapidy compost leaves (essentailly carbon) so that they join the carbon sink of the earth as rapidly as possible? This would enable all deciduous trees to be harnassed to sink carbon in the atmosphere. Decomposed leaves could become one of the cheapest, fastest, and least fossil fuel using methods of reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

Re the backyard, I take a middle of the road approach. I don't rake and discard them or even put the leaves in a formal compost pile. I just rake them into corners where I am not working and let them blow away or self compost. By spring there is not too much left of them.

So what do we do? Does it make sense to run a lawn mower over a yard full of leaves and then leave them there?

Another disappointing article in the NYT that totally overlooks the issue of the ignorance of the average homeowners about how their landscaping and maintenance choices can impact the health of the planet. Assuming one at least has a few trees that support the local birds, bees, and bugs, the leaves are are integral part of the ecosystem. Grinding them up grinds up the essential overwintering larva and eggs. Best to leave the leaves on the ground when you can (yes, it will kill the grass but maybe that will inspire some to look at alternative life-supporting landscapes) or try to rake as little as possible into piles that can become next year’s compost mulch. At the very least, the author should have referenced the books by Doug Tallamy for those interested in trying to do the rifght thing in the face of suburban cultures that value uniform sterility.

In my town (New Rochelle) the landscape companies pay off the police to ignore the leaf blower laws that are on the books but uninforced. There is a cacophony of gas motors every weekday from 8 am to evening. Brooklyn (where I moved from) is quiet by comparison.

1. Anyone who uses a leaf blower or hires landscape crews who use leaf blowers forfeits their right to complain about airplane noise. 2. We have a reel lawn mower, which unfortunately does not mulch leaves. We rake the front yard and put the leaves in a wire leaf bin. The following year, we have wonderful leaf hummus. It doesn't add nutrients but it is great for breaking up the soil and helping the soil to retain moisture. 3. We've been leaving most of the leaves on the little bit of lawn we have left after converting most of the yard to native plants. It does NOT kill or smother the lawn. We wish it would. Less to dig up.

I owned a home with many deciduous trees, maple and wild cherry, on 3/4 of an acre in Putnam County, N.Y. for 33 years. The leaves became such a nuisance to deal with, every fall I would spend probably 3 days, 24 man hours to clear them, that I began cutting down a tree a year until I was left with maybe 9 trees and a manageable task every fall.

I cut three acres of grass and used a recycling deck on my mower. I have numerous leaf bearing trees and the recycle deck just mulches it’s into fertilizer. I never use pesticides or any lawn food. I simple recycle the leaves back to Mother Nature. And, it sure beats raking!

Leaving the leaves on a lawn smothers the grass. You at least have to get those leaves cleaned up right away. You can leave a mulching pile around trees to keep the roots warmish but eventually by the next spring you wind up cleaning these up too. No doubt about it, Nature didn't do us many favors when she invented deciduous trees.

Some people need to live around leaves a little longer, and do a little more research. For a number of kinds of trees, anthracnose is a significant chronic problem. Leaving the leaves to rot makes it worse. There is no simple feel-good solution, any more than there is for, say, human nutrition.

"Then there are the piles on the curbs and sidewalks, which make irresistible playpens for children and fluffy bathrooms for dogs." Sidewalks are meant to be cleaned (of snow, leaves, and passing slobs' candy wrappers and coffee cups) by homeowners and businesses. Period. There are two schools of thought about leaving leaves in the garden itself: the first, that leaves provide cover and become mulch; the second, that the cover leaves provide is a breeding ground for mold and bacteria. (And increasingly, a warm nesting place for ticks to overwinter.) Best to rake and bag most of the leaves. You can put the rest into your compost pile and, if you can grind it down, around delicate shrubs that might need a bit of cover in cold weather. Yes, in Brooklyn too.