Experts say you shouldn't bag your leaves this year By Michael Martin,1 day ago
- Experts are making it known this year that you don't necessarily have to rake and bag the leaves in your yard.
- There are several reasons why you might consider leaving your leaves alone this year:
“Leaves are not litter. Leaves are just a natural thing that happens,” said Julie Batty, the land stewardship manager for Blandford Nature Center in Grand Rapids. “If you've got a relatively thin layer (Worthless "measure". Your grass will be dead!) of leaves, that's okay. The sun can still get through there.” (No, it can't!)
You don't want them to build up to the point where they create a thick, mushy layer that blocks off all sun, but a thin layer will actually help your lawn. "As those leaves biodegrade, you've got some natural fertilizer," Batty explained. (No, it won't help your lawn and no, it's not any type of fertilizer. I mulched for 40 years, lawn still awful!)
“If you have a pollinator garden, and you're worried about butterflies... Well, a lot of those butterfly and moth larvae, they pupate underneath those leaves and they need that leaf litter," Batty said. "So do smaller animals like turtles and frogs.” (Yup, and you'll murder them all when your rake/mow in April!)
Leaving your leaves in your yard also helps to reduce the approximate 8-million tons of leaves that make it into our country's landfills every year. “What happens when we get all those leaves in the landfill, is they degrade and they create methane gas, which is a very potent greenhouse gas," Batty explained... (Decomposition of all matter creates CO2, methane and many other gasses. Where it happens is not the issue.)
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The piranha press of citizen reporters will chomp away at every last inch of their propaganda until only the truth remains."