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PSA: I stopped mulching my leaves in November and my lawn came back worse in April
Everybody on my block bags their leaves and hauls them to the curb, and I used to be one of those people who swore mulching them into the grass in fall was the lazy smart move. So last November I ran the mower over the whole yard in Grand Rapids, chopped everything fine, and left it there like the internet said. Come April the lawn came up patchy and yellow in about a 10 foot strip by the driveway, and when I raked it up the mat of wet chopped leaves underneath was thick and slimy, smothering the grass all winter. I called a guy at the garden center on Burton and he said a light chop is fine but a heavy coat in a wet fall just turns into a blanket that holds moisture and breeds mold. So I'm now in the bag-it-and-let-the-city-compost camp for the heavy years, mulch only when the leaves are thin, and my lawn this spring looked a hundred percent better. I know mulching is the popular answer and I'm not saying it's wrong everywhere, but in my yard with two big maples it backfired. Has anyone else had a chopped leaf layer wreck their grass, and how thin do you go before you just rake?
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jesse_williams6211d ago
Man, that slimy mat under there sounds like a nightmare to rake up in spring. Sorry your lawn took the hit, but you probably just saved a bunch of us from the same mistake.
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