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Which is better for the lawn over the winter?
On Nov 2, 1:11*pm, Lawn Guy wrote:
Dioclese wrote: Lazy people will leave them where they land. *Slightly less lazy people will run over them with a lawn mower. *People that want healthy lawn and trees will bag them and get them the hell outa there. The premise (which I think is not valid) is that all people are under the notion that removing the leaves is the best solution for a healthy and green lawn and rees. * The corollary to your point would then be that people that do not bag their leaves are under the solid notion that leaving them on the ground *is better*. *There might be some of those, but I don't think it applies to the majority of "non-baggers". * It applies to me, because it is better. I'm a non-bagger. Just the fact that you use the term "non-bagger" suggests you live somewhere in an urban area with a lot of houses, parking lots and not many trees. Because in most rural places with folks with lots of trees and experience, bagging doesn't exist. If I had to bag, I'd be down at the muncipal offices, bitching big time. Here anyone who wants to have their leaves taken away, simply blows or rakes them into the street. The township comes by every couple of weeks from Nov thru Dec and vacuums them up. I pitty the guys wasting natural resources, money and a lot of time stuffing leaves into bags. If I did that, I'd have a hundred bags. I happen to believe that those that don't rake them are lazy and it probably shows in other ways that they take care of their grounds and property all year round. *Maybe they're physically incapable of raking and bagging - but in those cases they are presumably paying for yard maintainence - or they are on the eve of moving out of their home and into an apartment or managed care facility. Wow, what a sweeping and inaccurate generalization. When the leaves start to fall, I use a mulching mower to grind them up for as long as possible. I probably get rid of 40% of them that way. When they fall at a very heavy rate and/or accumulate in certain areas so that mulching would smother the grass, I blow them either into the woods (see no bagging there either) or out to the street. Our city stopped collecting bagged grass during regular weekly garbage pickup about 10 years ago. *Ever since then, if you bag your grass, you either compost it on your own propery, or you drop it at specified depots and pay $1 a bag. *By osmosis, every land-owner has come to understand that the correct (or at least the politically-correct) thing to do with cut grass is to leave it on the lawn. If you did a little research, you'd find that there is widespread agreement that mulching the clippings and leaving them is beneficial to the lawn. The clippings decay and provide nutrients. Actually, the folks who insist on bagging tend to be guys like you, who are only concerned about having the lawn look so picture perfect that an almost unnoticeable amount of mulched clippings can't be tolerated. Our city has been collecting bagged leaves in the fall for as long as I can remember, and they still do. *By osmosis, every residential land-owner is aware that raking and bagging leaves is the "natural" thing to do and is supported by a service provided by the city. *The big-box stores now have over-sized leaf rakes and leaf bags (paper and clear plastic) visible front and center when you enter, further reinforcing the concept that raking and bagging leaves is normal or natural, if not a beneficial part of turf and property management. Beneficial to the companies harvesting trees to make those bags, companies making the bags, trucks hauling the trees and bags, big box stores, the extra hours worked by landscapers, and municipal employees. Factor in the gas/fuel wasted producing bags, hauling the trees to make bags, hauling the leaves around, and I'd say there isn't anything natural or good for the environment in the whole process. Therefore (based on the premise), for everyone anything less than that is an exhibition of some degree of laziness toward that solution. Yes, because as I've described, there are public "cues" that point to leaf raking and bagging as something that's a normal, if not expected part of property management. And I'd say that anyone that just buys into the notion that because bagging is the way it's always been done, therefore it's normal and natural is engaging in monkey see, monkey do. As well, leaves that accumulate in the gutters and curbs of residential streets are a public nuisance that impedes the dissapation of rain and snow melt until the city cleans them in the spring. *Those that rake their leaves onto the road or allow their leaves to collect are negligent and lazy in that regard. Hmmm, what about on all the streets and roads in a municipality where there are just trees and no homes? Like in the country? You don't have any experience there, do you? In conclusion, I'd like to see some credible reference that agrees with your premise that mulching lawn grass clippings or mulching a reasonable amount of leaves in-situ with a mower, is incompatible with a healthy lawn. Quite the contrary, I've seen plenty of authorities that say returning either grass clippings or other organic matter in reasonable amounts is beneficial to the lawn. Also, if you have something that supports your claim that leaf removal is necessary to protect the health of trees in the yard, I'd like to see that too. |
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