Are fall leaves toxic?

 

Awl --

You'd think so, the way homeowners/landscapers run around with leaf blowers
getting rid of every single last one of them.

Is eliminating leaves that important?
What would happen if people *didn't* blow every leaf off their property?

What I find strange is that people will blow leaves off of bare dirt --  
seems to me you'd WANT leaves covering soil.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/public/46613.html   says that shredding leaves and
covering the lawn with them is a good thing.
Basically anything you do with leaves except burn them is OK -- leaves
collected by landscapers eventually get composted by the municipality -- I
think.

Personally, I think my neighbors are just a little to fanatic with this leaf
blowing thing -- jmo.
--
EA

 

Existential Angst wrote:

If leaves were toxic everyone on earth would be dead by now.
When you start feeling ill, stop eating them.

I personally like leaves on my property and only remove them
when they are in a specific place where they cover something
someone could trip over. Use your best judgment.

Laugh at your neighbors when they seem obsessed with removing
every single leaf. Don't let it bother you.

Robert J

 

Existential Angst wrote:

The same compulsive neatness and waste of effort is involved in having
"beautiful" lawns, in fact the two often go together as for ultimate
"beauty" you don't want leaves obscuring your lawn.  So many high-resource
lawns aren't even used for play, oh no this might produce wear spots, they
are just there to admire.  Such madness is taken to the extreme when the
compulsive leaf blowing lawn trimmer sends the debris to land fill.

David

 

On 11/5/2009 1:51 PM, Existential Angst wrote:

First priority is to use autumn leaves to mulch my beds.  After making a
layer about 3" thick, I lay out small branches to hold the leaves in
place.  Around my oak, I actually anchored chicken wire to hold the mulch.

Next priority is to add them to my compost pile, which is more leaf mold
than compost.  It has a large amount of oak leaves, which make a great
leaf mold.

In the end -- generally when my ash tree starts to drop its leaves --
they go in a bin for our county's composting program.  Since the leaves
often exceed the capacity of the bin, I make piles of them on the patio
and back walkways.

No, I don't have a blower.  I use a lawn rake.  I just had my back lawn
mowed.  It's red fescue, a tall ornamental grass.  If it were not mowed,
I would not be able to rake leaves from it; the accumulated leaves would
then smother the lawn.  I'll be adding some of the grass clippings to
the compost pile.

--
David E. Ross
Climate:  California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening diary at <http://www.rossde.com/garden/diary>

 

David E. Ross wrote:

   David,

  Why do you make a distinction between leaf mold and compost?  Aren't
  they the same thing?

  My solution is to use the lawn mower as a vacuum cleaner with a bag
  attached.  This mixture of chopped up leaves and some grass is more
  compact than the whole leaves.  This gets dumped into my compost bins.
  These bins can fill up initially, but very soon will natureally compact
  even more from their own weight or from the rain.  You ahould have
  enough room in any reasonably sized bins to acommodate your entire
  lawn.  I only bag my grass clippings once a year after leaf fall to
  clean up the leaves.  Otherwise, bagging too much will remove too
  much nutrients from the lawn.

                                Sherwin