Nature and Gardening

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All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.

See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.

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Trust in nature – and stop raking up your garden leaves (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Some choice quotes from the article:

[S]pent leaves that flutter to the ground aren’t a waste product. They are rich in carbon and play an essential role for the tree and the ecology it supports.

The leaves act as a physical barrier for soil, keeping it and its many microbes insulated, and also for the tree roots, as the wet mats of autumn leaves shelter the fragile top layer from the drying winds.

Many, many things live in these dead leaf layers: caterpillars of moths and butterflies, their chrysalises, beetles, centipedes, springtails, woodlice and spiders … and doesn’t the blackbird know it, rustling through the leaves?

No one loves wet autumn leaves more than earthworms, though. Sensing one of their favourite things, they start to work on incorporating them into the soil. Earthworms line their homes with autumn leaves, using them for bedding and then, because they are good housekeepers, they eat them as they break down.

Leave the leaves be: they are not a mess, a waste or a hindrance – they are life and vital with it.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Depending on how wind interacts with the location, many leaves are likely to end up congregating at boundaries like fences or walls or around taller garden elements like herbaceous perennials, shrubs, and trees. Smaller parcels with large canopy trees may run into this problem, but the aforementioned pattern plays out in our ⅒ acre poultry yard with several large deciduous trees overhead.