Out of convenience, I've wanted to mulch leaves (mostly Maple) into my lawn with a mulching mower. However, I've heard this might change the soil pH and end up killing the grass. Is mulching safe or is raking the way to go?
Chris
What is your soil pH now?
On your lawn mower keep you grass catcher on the back. I never rake leaves, I always mow them up. It is also better for your compost if the leaves are cut up smaller. So, mow your lawn with the leaves on the grass, then empty them into your compost bin (you do have one don't you--everyone should.)
Bye for now>>>>>>>>>>Kit
Clean up the leaves, they will smother your lawn.
(don't be lazy) :)
There's usually no problem mulching leaves or other plant material. As long as its mulched fine enough to breakdown quickly. Avoid mulching during wet or damp conditions.
Most grasses are resilient to PH changes.
If its a problem for you, rake all the leave in one section of the yard. Dump the leaves in another and mulch that entire area. See the results next spring. Then get back with us on the humbug someone told you.
I routinely mow up as many leaves as possible with my mulching mower instead of removing them by other means. Never had a problem. I check soil PH every few years and haven't seen any diff either. Mulching them that way is conveneient and beneficial to the soil and lawn, as long as you don't mulch too much at one time.
That's all well and good as long as he has kept up with his fallen leaves so far, but if he hasn't cleaned up his leaves until now (Dec 4) he's asking for trouble by not doing the required yard clean-up first, if he has substantial leaves.
Should I rake these up first, or just mulch them in?
Gee- I would have thought that a University the size of UW would have a groundskeeping department to make all those difficult decisions for you.
-- Toni South Florida USA Zone 10b
Is that your advice?
you can mow them finely, and they will help grass, as long as the spot gets sunlight. One foot of dried leaves gives you a few millimeters of leaf mold.
That caught my attention. Why avoid mulching while wet ? They break down quicker when wet. When I used to use a shredder I kept a hose going continuously on the output. Do you cover your compost pile to keep it dry ? A dry pile of mulched leaves will take a long time to cook - a wet pile will produce heat in 48 hours.
The key here is you kept the _output_ wet. If the leaves are wet before you try to shred them, they don't shread as well.
Also, whether or not it's suitable to just shred and leave them on the lawn depends on how many of them there are. I vac and shred the leaves from my biggest tree, and they produce a pile of shredded leaves that's 10'x10', and about 9" deep. The area that they fall in is about three times that area, but that would still mean I'd have a 3" layer of shredded leaves covering that part of my lawn. If all I did was run the mulching mower over them, by the mid-point of leaf season I wouldn't have the strength to push the mower through the remains, and it would probably stall-out, anyway.
On the other hand, in my back yard I have a lot of smaller trees, and it does just fine with the mulching mower.
Now if someone thinks I'm exaggerating, next fall they're welcome to come over and demonstrate how a mulching mower would be enough on my front lawn, as long as they're willing to post a bond large enough for me to have the damage repaired in the spring.
Hi Warren.
I have 14 big tree canopy's over my immediate lawn, there's no flippin' way I could consider mulching all those leaves where they fall down. It would destroy the turf in one season.
These general questions are tough to answer with one size fits all.
How do you even get a lawn to grow with that much shade?
Lawn grows well, it's a big lawn so the shade is not as bad as it sounds, and it has automatic irrigation.
The leaves -alone- would ruin it if I attempted to mulch all of them back in.
YMMV
in the burnt paper and cardboard, et al will all mix up and keep some other type of foliage happy.
Or do a one time this season all leaves mulched at once. The grass will adjust to the PH change, if it exists. Then readjust as mulching is done more often.
The leaves will all go someplace and decay someplace. Its better now than in some plastic bag a thousand years from now in a burial pit for community trash.
Why kill the ozone layer and loose the valuable resource of good organic matter, when all you have to do is let them rot to get the best of all worlds.
Sense high density factor. The glib you quoted was from a sentence meant as sarcasm.
I think that the main reason for not mowing up leaves when wet is that they just lay there all wet all uncooperatively and do not pick up and be cut up and mulched or thrown around. Lazy wet leaves.... I try to double cut them by sending them inside my circle of cut and then once in a while turning around and sending them outward. Seems to work OK that way. I do this when it is dry. Tomes
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