Leave the leaves alone!
Autumn is my favorite season because of the transition into the cold days, foggy days, cozy days at home with a hot chocolate, tea or coffee planning the garden for next year. Planting new trees and seeding cover crops, planting garlic, etc. And outside the best hiking time for me, cold but not too cold the wonderful colors of the leaves from orange, yellow and red.
But this year I started to feel quite angry with Autumn why? Because of the leaves. Well, technically not the leaves but what the people do with the leaves.
Context
Every year I see houses with plastic bags full of leaves and other organic matter on the front of the house.
First I didn’t realize about the content of these bags I always thought it was just regular trash.
Then I found out that content is mostly leaves waiting for a truck to take away and it just infuriates me… okay, at least I would like to think that they go to a big compost pile I don’t know where exactly.
So I want to try to educate people about: Be conscious of the fallen leaves, generate less waste, work less and improve their soil fertility.
Nutrient cycling
Leave the leaves alone.
Leaves from the trees, bushes or other plants they spend the whole year collecting nutrients from the soil, storing it on their leaves when they dropped them, they decomposes and they are putting back to the soil all these nutrients, not only benefits the tree but also what grows around and certain trees are nitrogen fixers other dynamic accumulators meaning you are improving the fertility of your soil by doing NOTHING! just leaving Nature do the rest and plus you have a natural mulching layer!
Wildlife habitat
Fallen leaves provide shelter, food, and breeding grounds for various insects as well as small animals like toads and turtles. Brushing them away can disrupt these ecosystems and harm local wildlife.
How will you feel if someone brush your house away during the cold winter?
Soil structure
Leaves help improve soil structure by adding organic matter and insulation. This can reduce soil compaction, improve drainage, and regulate soil temperature.
Ego, fear or just selfishness
I just prefer not to touch the leaves on my garden.
For me it’s a waste of time when everyone in autumn is going crazy about brushing away their leaves working hard when they just need to leave them, do nothing and enjoy the benefits.
Why you will work so hard to disturb nature?
We think we can understand nature, manipulate nature but the most beautiful thing about Nature is that we can’t recreate Nature. Even when the most advance technology to this day.
Just for clarification I don’t think everyone knows what their are doing when they brush the leaves away, probably for the majority of people is just rubbish something that disturbs them. There’s an urge to have everything neat.
That leads to the connection the same for growing food. I’m a huge advocate about mulching and no dig, no till garden and my garden sometimes looks like a wild jungle, but I know where everything is growing sometimes I don’t know and I found “wild” vegetables growing outside where I planned them but that’s Nature for me, that’s beautiful but many people are obsessed about to have a beautiful “weedless” garden with all the soil exposed perfectly brushed to look “nice” or a beautiful leafless garden in autumn.
Leave the leaves alone, go inside take a good bath or maybe a cup of tea and enjoy autumn without disturbing Nature.
Thanks I’ll appreciate it 🙂 but don’t do it for me do it for the environment, for the wildlife and most important do it for the soil!
