Why do people rake up their leaves?

So you do not kill the grass.

In our old neighborhood you had to rake up the leaves. If you didn’t you’d get a fine.

@ChazMaz How will it kill the grass? They’ll be long decomposed by the time the grass starts growing again….

@ChazMaz i never understood this argument. I mean the leaves fall right before all the snow covers the ground for months.

Because I get tired of trying to glue them back onto the trees.

In our city we are very fortunate because all we have to do is rake to the curb and the city comes around and vacuums them up. Sure our taxes are sky high, but this service makes it worth it…sort of

I just mow them.

So that you can justify the cost of your leaf blower.

Our neighborhood fines you if you don’t use a paper bag for your yard waste,

Around here they don’t get put into a landfill, but get recycled or composted.
They also promote rot and slugs, which are not necessarily desirable in an urban neighborhood. Thankfully, my leaves are still hanging out where they fell (or where the puppies, cars, and wind have moved them since.) More Leopard Slugs, please!

In my area, they have special garden bins where you put plant material in. It gets recycled, turned into mulch, etc. At my house, for the most part, we just had the leaves blown off the pavement and the lawns (or the leaves would just get mowed) into the dirt areas where they can decompose and become new dirt. If there was a real excess, then the rest of the leaves would get put in the garden bin.

Personally, I think removing leaves from dirt areas is stupid and I see it happen all the time, especially by the edges of houses. These edges are always covered in mud because when it rains, the mud splashes up on the side of the house because there are never any leaves there, but if you just left them there, that wouldn’t happen and they would eventually turn into dirt themselves. Moreover, leaves provide nutrients and enrich the soil.

In places that are prone to forest fires, you are compelled to rake them up along with pine needles and other debris because it increases the risk of burning the house down.

(Also: I live in a place where it doesn’t snow and so the lawns stay green all year long).

They don’t in Ft. Collins, CO.

The leaves do not decompose that fast, they will choke out the grass. If you have enough leaves on the ground and winter ends you will have clumps of leaves that will prevent the grass from growing fully.
If you do not rake them up the yard will look funky. Dead patches all over the place.

I currently live in florida and I have trees that drop their leaves. If I do not rake them up, the grass will not grow as pretty as I would like it to.

@ChazMaz has reminded me of something. In colder climates, if the grass dies before serious winter arrives, a lack of grass will cause serious mud and erosion problems. That’s a concern beyond suburban aesthetics.

@Beta_Orionis – You got that right.

Now, mulberry leaves are a different story. Those are always put in the garden bin because they’re huge, they smother plants, and they take forever to decompose. But I love our mulberry tree. :)

Same with palm fronds. We have a couple palm trees in our yard, but those are huge and are just put straight in the garden bin. I know not all areas have that kind of thing, but at least don’t use plastic bags. The less plastic bags we use, the better.

@DominicX When I lived in Calfornia, I had to search high and low for mulberry trees! I collected the leaves to keep my silk worms fed in Spring. :) Turns out, the only place to find them was on public elementary school playgrounds. Felt a little strange as I got older….

@Beta_Orionis You can have some of ours. Seriously. :)

@DominicX You should sell them to silk worm suppliers!

Even in areas where they pickup yard clippings for compost, they typically won’t get those left in plastic bags. You need to use kraft (i.e. paper) bags that will also decompose instead.

Additionally, it’s important to realize that landfills are designed to be incredibly stable. Nothing decomposes in a landfill. Newspapers over 50 years old have been dredged up and are perfectly legible. For all intents and purposes, consider a landfill to be permanent.

Eventually they’re capped off and then parks, communities, whatever are built on top of them. It’s not like they’re necessarily a permanent blight on the landscape for all time.

@Val123 I recently asked this question about why people do stuff with their leaves. I mow ‘em and allow them to be food for my lawn and mulch beds.

My leaves would not decompose completely, too many of them. We blow the majority of them back into the woods. I just received this year a “trash can” for yard waste from the trash collection company, so we can put leaves in there, I guess without bags and they go to wherever they bring yard waste to. I asume they mulch it up do otehr recycle stuff with it all.

@rangerr I doubt your neighborhood would fine you if you composted.

I pretty much live in a forest (~) and there are so many leaves that it takes several hours of work every couple days to keep the yard clear. To leave the leaves alone not only looks ridiculous but also threatens the grass (and the health of my tiny orange corgi who can easily disappear inside the piles: kinda like this).

We don’t throw them away in plastic bags, though. We have a fairly large backyard and the far end of it on the edge of the woods is devoted to holding the leaves. It does make great mulch/whatever (and it also makes a nice spot to have the dog use as a bathroom).

Another huge problem is the hickory nuts that the squirrels drop on your head as you’re raking….

When I was a kid.
We would throw matches onto the piles of leaves that were left in the street.

Yea, yea… I know…

@SpatzieLover I was referring to the plastic bag comment.. we compost all of our stuff, but for the ones who do put it on the curb it has to be in a paper bag. sorry!

@rangerr Thanks for the clarification

@nxknxk I love your Corgi. I want one! Black walnuts top Hickory nut pain ;)

@SpatzieLover

Disclaimer: all corgis photographed in above @nxknxk post do not belong to @nxknxk and were not photographed by @nxknxk.

His corgi is way cuter anyway.

@nxknxk I wuvs the Corgi either way!

The township I live in sucks up the leaves once the homeowners rake them to the side of the road. No bags needed.

No snow here (Northern California). Grass grows green all winter. We pile the leaves at the curb for leaf collection every week during the fall season. No bags.

Ah, I do miss the pungent fragrance of burning leaves in the fall. We used to incinerate them in wire baskets in our back yards. Might not have been the best idea, but it did create an aura of aromatic smoke all over town, one of the sensuous features of autumn that stay with me in memory year after year. No bags then, either, and no costly pickup. (And no obnoxious roar and pollution of gas-powered leaf blowers.) Just lots of raking. An activity for the whole family on crisp autumn weekends in New England.

@Jeruba – That brought tears to my eyes.

I could smell the smoke and feel the crispness in the air. :-)

@Jeruba You just described what it was like here in central Illinois this past weekend. We had beautiful weather and many families were out raking and burning leaves. I do love the smell myself.

@Jeruba I could understand it if the grass never died out but here in Kansas….ah. I don’t know what to do.

@Jeruba Those are my memories as well. Raking and playing in the huge fluffy piles of maple leaves. The smell of them is sweet and earthy. Then burning by the side of the street. Roasting marshmallows….

edit…
Now the big sucker comes and takes them to be composted.

@Val123, it does. In summer.

How nice to know my memories are shared and held by others with the same tender nostalgia. Nostalgia itself is like the fragrance of burning autumn leaves.

@jonsblond, I didn’t know leaf burning was still permitted anywhere. I am going to have to figure out a way to visit central Illinois in early November of some year just to inhale the air. Do you happen to know if people still burn leaves in Iowa too?

@Jeruba It’s legal in a ‘burb next to mine yet here in Wis, too ;) But it’s illegal in most locales now like mine

I thought we only raked leaves so we could make big mound piles and either run through them or jump in them. I didn’t think it was to “clean up”

Oh yeah we also raked them to fill up the big orange garbage bags that looked like pumpkins for Halloween.

@Jeruba It is legal in the country and in most of the small towns in the area. I’m not sure of Iowa. We need @jbfletcherfan here to answer that for us! It is beautiful here in the fall.

To avoid slippery sidewalks.

What about peoples health. My hubby and I are both not well, and there is no way we can rake all of the leaves in our yard. It has just become too physical a task, nor can we afford to pay someone to do it for us. The kids live too far away to come and do it for us – so we are stuck! Any suggestions???