Fall Clean Up

Ah, the beauty of fall. The leaves turn orange and yellow and red. The holiday season is just around the corner and do you hear it.....the neighborhood is quiet. Yes, we love fall around here. Here where I live, the leaves are on the tree for less then a week after they start changing. We go from summer to winter in no time. The simple beauty of fall gives way quickly to the clean up of fall.
Raking, piling, raking some more, sweeping and doing it again tomorrow since the neighbors leaves blew into your yard.

I learned this year that instead of raking up and bagging all those leaves, we could just run the lawn mower over them on the mulch setting. This seems like an easy way to feed our lawn and save labor. If you have too many leaves to leave on the ground, rake a few and place them on top of your garden beds. Give a little turn and you will have beautiful soil in the spring.

The key to leaving the leaves on the grass for the winter is if you can still see grass blades you are fine. So, mulch away.