Fall Leaf Myths: 7 Practices to Avoid in the Garden
Fall leaves are valuable resources! They add nutrition, warmth, and structure to existing soils. When they decay they boost the health of your garden plants and provide a home for vulnerable wildlife. This year, help your local environment’s biodiversity by avoiding these seven fall leaf cleanup mistakes.
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Why do we garden? Maybe you grow plants as a food source to lower your grocery store costs. Or, you plant native plants throughout your yard to feed local wildlife. Many of us garden to create a humble home oasis that fosters peace and serenity.
Whatever your reasons for gardening, there are some simple changes you can make this year to help both yourself and the sensitive animal populations that need the leaves. When you throw away or discard this debris, you remove resources from the environment. It’ll take thousands of years before they return, and our ecosystems will struggle.
So, what do you say? Let’s pledge to garden for wildlife and not against it! These are seven myths about fall leaves and cleanup practices you should avoid during autumn, as well as alternative solutions for easy garden maintenance.
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- Organic material that breaks down over time, building your soil
- Light color reflects more light and heat away from soil surface
- Adds a boost of nitrogen and carbon to soil season after season as layers break down
- Natural, aesthetically pleasing look to garden beds, containers, and pots
Throwing Them Away
Leaves naturally decay and turn into humus, a rich byproduct of decomposition, but it is a common myth that you should throw them away. Humus is what makes garden soils black, crumbly, and nutrient-rich. It’s like gold for the garden! Humus absorbs excess water during droughts and holds air pockets for plant roots to access amidst flooding.
When you throw leaves away, you deprive your garden beds of this valuable resource. Your plants will need more improvements, mulch, and maintenance without a leafy cover to protect them during fall. You’ll have to buy fertilizer, soil amendments, and other garden additions to make up for the loss of natural resources.
The worst thing you can do with these valuable resources is put them in a plastic bag and throw them away. Trapped within the bag, they’ll stay hidden underneath mounds of trash in a landfill. Future humans may excavate these trash bags and think, “What were they doing back then?” Avoid this embarrassment and try these easy solutions instead.
What To Do Instead
There are dozens of practical leaf cleanup solutions that you can complete within your garden. Leaves are the perfect mulch material. They create a thick layer during fall and winter. Then, the leaves decay throughout the seasons to form a humus-rich soil layer by spring. Your garden ornamentals will thank you as temperatures warm and days lengthen—they’ll have all the resources they need to access from the decayed leaves!
If you cover your garden beds and still have leaves, try making compost or leaf mold with them. Make a pile of the stuff and turn it in once a week. You’ll have an easily accessible source of leaf mold come spring.
Finally, if your neighbors have too many leaves ask them if you can take them off their hands! The gardening community is a strong one, and your neighbors will appreciate the offer. You’ll go home satisfied, knowing you’re helping your local community and the natural environment.
Leaf Blowing
Leaf blowers are useful tools. I use them occasionally during autumn to push leaves onto my garden beds. One thing to note is these machines create lots of noise while they work, with some considering them an unnecessary source of noise pollution!
A good old-fashioned leaf rake works just as well as a leaf blower and is comparatively quiet. It may take more time to push the leaves onto your beds, although you and your neighbors will have peaceful minds without the excessive leaf-blowing noise.
What To Do Instead
If you are like me, you may have some uses for leaf blowers. They push leaves from the street into your garden for easy cleanup. They allow you to do a day’s work in half the time. If you are going to leaf blow, consider doing so during the day when people are awake and lively. Avoid using these machines at night or in the morning, and wear headphones to protect your sensitive eardrums.
Burning
Burning leaves is a waste! You create ash that you can use in your garden, although ash has many lasting effects on soil. It can swing pH levels out of balance, creating excessively basic soil. Burning leaves also releases carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to our growing climate change issues.
Leaf burning is an old garden practice that many swear by, although we now know there are many easy alternatives with dozens more benefits. When you burn leaves, you waste valuable habitat space that insects, small mammals, and reptiles use for cover.
What To Do Instead
Don’t waste those leaves! Try using the excess materials to make compost or leaf mold. You can make giant piles with the stuff and leave them to decay for the cold seasons. You’ll have a free soil improvement in spring that doesn’t affect the soil’s pH like ashes would.
If you still have excess leaves, consider asking your neighbors or a local community garden if they can use them. My community garden has a giant leaf pile that you can climb onto! It decays into leaf mold, and the garden gives it freely to volunteers to take home into their gardens. Although you may not need leaves, there could be dozens of people nearby that want them.
Removing Habitat Space
Nature has leaves fall for many reasons, although a particularly important one is to house vulnerable wildlife. It is a myth that leaves are only overwintering grounds for pests. Beneficial species like fireflies, bees, and insect larvae also overwinter underneath leafy covers. They stay safe from predators, frost, and dry weather by curling up in the leaf litter.
Not only do leaves help small critters, but they also help larger animals that eat them. Overwintering birds peruse them, using their beaks to overturn them. The grubs and beetles they find keep them fed and satisfied throughout the cold months.
These natural resources also aid creatures that live deep below the soil, like worms and beetle larvae. The leaf litter insulates the top layers of dirt, keeping belowground critters warm and safe from frost.
What To Do Instead
Leave those leaves! The best way to help these vulnerable creatures is to let leaves remain where they fall. Animals find their way into the cover, and they’ll there remain until the weather warms in spring.
Leaf mold and compost piles also house critters during winter, although turning the piles may harm them. Consider making a cold compost pile during the cool months; you’ll still have a free soil improvement, and you’ll help sensitive animals survive.
Leaving Bare Soil
Bare soil is bad for plants! It allows frost to penetrate, creating inhospitable conditions for plant roots and soil microorganisms. Organisms like fungi and bacteria won’t die, they’ll just go deeper below the soil where it’s still warm. Plant roots, however, may suffer from the cold.
Chilly, frozen soil threatens sensitive perennials that are more frost-tender than woody shrubs and trees. Leave the soil bare, and you may have dozens of plant deaths by springtime. Leaves provide natural insulation in deciduous forests where they fall. Mimic this process in your landscape to provide a warm home for your precious plants.
What To Do Instead
Instead of bare soil, choose to have a thick leaf layer instead. The leafy materials decompose over time while insulating the ground. When insulation is no longer necessary during the growing season, you’ll find leaves shifting into black humus. Your ornamentals, fruits, and vegetables will awaken from their winter slumber to find nutritious and porous topsoil for their roots.
Smothering Your Lawn
Lawns need access to light, water, and air to thrive. Thick leaf litter can cause the grass clumps to wither and decay. This is great if you’re converting lawns into garden beds! It’s not so great if you’d still like some lawn to sit on in spring.
A few leaves are okay, although a layer thicker than an inch can smother the grass. Leaves lose moisture as they decompose and they wither into tiny pieces. They only become a problem for grass lawns when they form thick, wet mats on top of the soil.
What To Do Instead
Fear not, as there are easy lawn management techniques to utilize leafy litter. You can move it off your lawn onto garden beds where it’ll help plants, microorganisms, and animals survive hard frosts. You may also use it for composting or making leaf mold.
A favorite solution of mine is to use a lawn mower with a mulch plug. The blades chop the leaf litter into tiny pieces that fall between grass blades. You’ll feed the lawn with valuable carbon and nitrogen from the decaying litter—you’ll allow the grass access to the sunshine and water it needs to survive.
Working Against Nature
Let nature do its thing! We often complete garden tasks for aesthetic purposes, but it’s helpful to consider the surrounding environment while we grow plants. The garden exists for our enjoyment, but it also is here to house and feed local animals.
As wildlife species suffer from deforestation and habitat loss, creating a biodiverse haven for them is a radical action with long-lasting benefits. You not only create more maintenance for yourself when you work against nature, but you may harm sensitive critters without realizing it. Take time to think this autumn, and consider how we are a part of a larger world with natural processes happening all around us.
What To Do Instead
Instead of working against nature, work with it! Let fungi, bacteria, and archaea eat up your leaves to turn them into black, crumbly humus. Let your lawn die out in favor of garden beds full of native plants. Native species provide nectar and pollen that other plants can’t, feeding animals that rely on specific plants for survival.
One small action has long-lasting effects. Each bag of leaves you spare from the landfill is one extra bag of resources for your garden. When in doubt, leave the leaves!
