Blog - Fall leaf mulching – Why? How? When?

Fall leaf mulching – Why? How? When?

The colorful fall leaves offers beautiful views, as well as many hours of leaf removal work. Did you know that fallen leaves can be a great source of nutrients for your lawn? So instead of spending many hours raking leaves and money to send them to the landfill, a good alternatiive is mulching the leaves.

Why is leaf mulching beneficial?

Leaf mulching at the end of the mowing season leaves mowing waste on the lawn surface as nutrients. In essence, it is soil fertilization, which has several beneficial effects:

You grow the humus layer and thus make the soil more fertile
You improve the micro-level Living environment
You protect plants from rapid freezing
You reduce the risks to plants caused by winter soil temperature fluctuations
You reduce the spread of weeds

Since the need to remove or compost leaves disappears with mulching, you thereby save time spent raking leaves and the cost of hauling them to landfill. In addition, you make your contribution so that less waste ends up in the already overloaded landfills.

How and when to mulch leaves?

In autumn, the leaves begin to fall little by little, and this continues until the cold weather. When the first cold wave arrives, the trees drop their leaves all at once. So that the layer of mulched leaves is not too thick at once, it is worth starting mulching the leaves as soon as the leaves start to fall, and do it regularly. For mulching, the surface temperature of the soil must be at least 6°C. If the ground temperature is lower, the grass will not grow anymore and the chances of fungal diseases will increase.

If you want to mulch, take into account that at the end of the season, the grass is not cut too low – you should leave the grass blades at a height of about 7cm, so that the mulching waste remains hidden in the grass.

Leaf mulching is very easy and does not require a special machine. All mowers are suitable for mulching, which can be set in mulching setting, i.e. the ejection holes of the mower housing are closed and the straight cutting blades are replaced with mulching blades. For mulching, use a rake or a leaf blower to collect all the leaves that have falles into flower beds and paths onto the open lawn, where you can chop them into a fine powder with a lawnmower and then leave them to rot between the blades of grass.

Remember that as the organic mulch decomposes, the microorganisms use up a lot of nitrogen elements in the soil, the soil mulched with tree leaves may need additional nitrogen fertilizer!