I will admit, I kind of like the whole “leave the leaves” thing. Maybe not for the reasons we hear about, but not raking is never a bad thing, is it?
Not raking leaves is good for the environment. There are many reasons not to, but there are also good reasons to at least rake some. If you cover too much of your lawn, it can kill off some of the grass. But they also provide good winter protection for gardens and good places for insects to nest for the winter.
So there could be a balance to this not raking thing.
While it might help pollinators and provide food for various small animals who eat the insects who live there, they can also cause fungus to grow on your grass and other little side effects. You can leave them, but you have to be a bit careful how long.
And there are other possible negative effects. Like if you leave all the leaves on your lawn but your neighbour rakes up every single one of theirs. One good breeze and the neighbour is probably not going to be your biggest fan.
I will admit, I don’t do a lot of raking this time of year. It’s a timing thing really. The one big tree a have that dumps most of the leaves in my back yard holds them until the last possible moment. That tree holds onto its leaves until its just about to snow every year. Whether I want to clean up the leaves or not is not really up to me. It’s the tree.
Should I have that day when I’d really like spend time in the yard, the tree will just laugh at me and shake its leaves above my head. So I blame the tree.
And I can claim it’s good for the environment.
I also rarely have that day when I want to spend time in the yard raking leaves.
Add all those things up, it means the leaves are going to spend the winter in my yard.
