Do you rake leaves in the fall?

HeatherC

Alas...these people I live with ...
Joined
May 23, 2003
Just spent some time this afternoon doing some fall clean up which is basically getting rid of all the leaves that fall. We have a large yard and haven’t raked in about 20 years. I use a leaf blower to clean out the flower beds then I have my son or dh use the ride on mower to mulch the leaves. It is so much quicker and easier than raking. We are lucky because we don’t have to bag the leaves.....we just blow some in the woods and mulch the rest.

Wondering if others do the same or prefer to rake them up.
 
I have a very small front yard. I rake every Tuesday morning and get any leaves in my yard onto the other side of the sidewalk. It takes about 5 minutes max. The neighborhood landscapers come around every Tuesday and get the leaves on the street side of the sidewalk. Lucky for me the prevailing wind patterns send most of the leaves the desired direction anyway.
 
No. My house slopes enough towards the street. I have 2 street trees and mother nature usually blows everything onto the street.
 


We have a big yard. DH goes out on a windy day and rides the lawn tractor through them and lets them blow away.
 
We take a few times in the fall. If we don’t the leaves get slimy and mouldy under the snow and it’s a way worse job in the spring.
 
My husband mows the lawn more in the fall than in the spring and summer! We have lots of trees and it's much easier to pick them up with the mower than to rake.
 


Personally, no, or not any longer. I've had a lawn service to take care of raking and fall cleanup for the past five years or so.

My town has twice a year pickup if you rake your leaves into the street. One of them is this current week, which day depends on the neighborhood. The second pickup is the first week of December. I'll probably have the service come around one final time in mid-December.
 
No. It’s part of our landscaping service. They do our mowing, raking and shoveling.
 
Zero lot line kind of situation here where maintenance takes care of all the landscaping. It's really pretty, much prettier than I did when I had a lawn service and a large yard:)
 
Every week! We have filled up about 10 of those leaf bags and two full yard debris containers, from just ONE tree. Luckily our tree is nearly finished.
 
Well, this time of year I have to rake before I mow, not because of the leaves, but because of the seed pods our magnolia tree drops. They make a horrible racket when they hit the mower blade, so we rake before hand. Now, magnolias are supposed to be evergreen, but they lose losts of their thick, waxy leaves in March/April/May. Those I mow up.
 
I just finished raking ours today. I mulch the ones on one side as they are from black walnut trees and are no good for the garden. The other side are maple trees, I dump them in the garden and spread them out, they rot over the winter and help the soil in the spring
 
Well, this time of year I have to rake before I mow, not because of the leaves, but because of the seed pods our magnolia tree drops. They make a horrible racket when they hit the mower blade, so we rake before hand. Now, magnolias are supposed to be evergreen, but they lose losts of their thick, waxy leaves in March/April/May. Those I mow up.

Have a similar issue with acorns. And also the leaves can be so thick that mulching would take several passes. So I am a leaf raker. And the town does pick them up from in front of the house, so no bagging needed.
 
We have a giant white maple in our front yard. We rake, so it looks like we're good neighbors who are trying to prevent our leaves from getting everywhere. But the winds are pretty strong, and then mostly end up in our neighbors yard anyway.

The backyard we only rake if we haven't fertilized yet and the grass really needs it. Like this year. But most years we don't. Except we have a Kentucky Coffee Tree, and we have to clean up the pods because they don't mulch with the mower.
 
We used to mow and mulch all the leaves. Now we just pick up the palm fronds.
 
Leave and mulch them.


According to National Wildlife Federation Naturalist David Mizejewski, “Fallen leaves offer a double benefit. Leaves form a natural mulch that helps suppress weeds and fertilizes the soil as it breaks down. Why spend money on mulch and fertilizer when you can make your own?”

However, just leaving the leaves to lay where they fall in the autumn (see what I did there?) isn't the most effective way of getting the most benefits out of them, as sometimes they can really pile up in areas where they may effectively smother a section of the yard, but there are a number of different ways to approach your leaf harvest, depending on your particular situation.

As one plant and soil specialist, Dr. Thomas Nikoai of Michigan State University, put it, leaving the leaves on the lawn is " ... not only not a problem, it's awesome." According to an interview at Christian Science Monitor, Dr. Nikolai says that by mowing over the fallen leaves to turn them into smaller pieces, the leaves will actually enhance the lawn's fertility, not kill it off. And while it's usually recommended to use a mulching mower, or a mulching attachment, to convert the larger leaves into smaller-sized particles, virtually any mower can do the job, and it's merely a matter of mowing over the leaf-filled yard a few times during the season.
 

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