Many homeowners decide to leave accumulated fall leaves unattended. Unfortunately, this can cause harm to your lawn. Leaf raking and properly discarding the leaves is crucial in your home’s routine lawn care for many reasons. One of them being that as leaves begin to accumulate, available nutrients for your lawn can be tied up by the bacteria and fungus that are working to decompose the leaves, resulting in growth decrease, plant, and grass decay. On top of that allowing your lawn to become overwhelmed with leaves can give fungus, mold, and disease a place to reside.
All The Leaf Raking Hacks To Make It Easier
Having The Proper Tools
- The first and most basic hack is to make sure you have a good quality rake to successfully clean up a yard full of leaves. Many of us still possess an old rake that we have held onto for years. Nevertheless, investing in a new rake will certainly make all the difference.
- Take note that a wide-end rake is essential to ensure your rake gathers as many leaves as possible in fewer strokes. Purchase a rake greater in length to avoid constantly bending over. Finally, select a rake with easy-grip handles to prevent cuts or blistering.
Transporting The Leaves To Their Appropriate Place
- Take advantage of the tarp to avoid working harder rather than smarter. Instead of repeatedly gathering and hauling a pile of leaves across your yard, simply gather them on the tarp, close it and toss them in the garbage. This also saves you the hassle of bagging leaves up in various trash bags which can be extremely tedious and wasteful.
- If you don’t have any tarp on hand you can always use a cardboard box as a substitute. Although it sounds silly, if you remove the top and bottom flaps from one end of the box and then flatten and tape the ends together you can use this to remove leaves from your yard much faster than raking. Simply drag the box across your yard and it will scoop up leaves making them easy to transport saving you from a days’ worth of raking.
- Believe it or not, a windy day can be used to your advantage when raking leaves. Most people assume this is the worst time to rake. Nonetheless, if you simply rake the leaves in the direction the wind is blowing it will help the leaves go where you wish.
Mulching Benefits and Wet Leaves
- Mulching the leaves in your lawn is a commonly used method due to the benefits of mulched leaves. Use a lawnmower with a serrated blade to grind the leaves into little bits that can be used for compost material or garden bed fertilizer.
- it is a good idea to add supplemental nitrogen following leaf mulching, a good organic fertilizer will provide the nitrogen required to compost the pulverized leaves and is generally easy and safe to apply in all season
- Lastly, whatever method you use to clean up a yard full of leaves we advise you not to deal with leaves when they are wet. They are far more messy, heavy, and much more of a headache regardless of the cleaning option you use to get rid of them.
Chorbie Is Here To Help!
It’s easy to let leaves take over and cause severe damage to your lawn. Chorbie experts specialize in lawn care and landscaping and deal with these issues homeowners are facing day in and day out. Contact us today for more information about how we can assist you in ensuring a well-maintained and healthy lawn. With us, you’ll never have to worry about another leaf raking chore ever again!
