Thoughts on Leaf-Raking: The Fall Gardening Chore Nobody Loves

People who live in the country tend to have a more relaxed attitude towards leaf raking in the fall. While city folks may fuss over that last oak leaf and strive for a pristine lawn bordered by neat flower beds, rural residents are more likely to shred leaves where they are on the lawn, push them aside to cover house-site plantings, rake them over vegetable patches, or blow them into nearby woods.

Almost everyone uses garden rakes, whether wood, metal, or plastic, and many use gas- or electric-powered blowers to accomplish this annual autumnal task. Some propel the leaves into bags or containers, with city types expecting municipal authorities to pick up the leaves as they do the regular weekly trash while countrysiders consider various options for their mounds of papery remnants, including mulch for gardens, orchards, and hillsides. Raking leaves onto a plastic or canvas tarp works reasonably well even in windy conditions, especially if more than one person is assisting in the chore. Wheelbarrows and trash barrels can also be used to move the gathered-up mounds.

Lawn mowers, the kind with a discharge chute, can be used to move leaves into a heap for easier bagging or to move them from the street-side of the lawn to the house-side where they may serve to blanket the ornamental plantings for the winter. Riding lawn movers handle this task a little better because you can easily set the mower level at four inches and blow plenty of air for the purpose of dealing with tree debris. Shredding the leaves by mowing over them can also be useful, whether seeking a reduction in the leaf mass for bagging or allowing the leaves to remain on site to serve as an organic lawn treatment.

In my area, the annual fall raking chore is matched with similar springtime rituals--raking out the flower beds, preparing the asparagus patch, and checking the grape and berry arbors before applying fresh fertilizer for the new growing season. The leaves left over from winter are not the light and pretty ones last glimpsed in the pre-snowfall autumn, but instead are soggy, muddy, and heavy. Still, this is good organic material and can be rototilled into the vegetable garden plot or removed to a nearby woods' edge for distribution among the trees and shrubbery. Folks in towns sometimes bag up these leaves too as garden detritus to be picked up on trash collection day.

The only ways to avoid some version of the leaf ritual is to give up on deciduous trees entirely, wall off your lawn with tall thick evergreens, or move to a treeless plain. But drastic measures are hardly necessary no matter how irritating the leaf-raking process can be on short, sunny Saturdays in October and November. A little bit of outdoor work, choosing whatever leaf-removal implement, allows your lawn to breathe and covers up the more delicate plants for the colder months. Then spring returns and, sure enough, there will be new leaves and, later, another chance to figure out how to deal with heaps of shedded foliage at summer's end.

Terry Ettinger, "Improve your soil by raking less" Fine Gardening Magazine

Danny Lipford, "Latest in Leaf-Raking, Gathering Aids" CBS News Online