Tree Care Tip: Mulching Leaves with a Lawn Mower

When the leaves on the trees start to fall, each year you are faced with a tough decision: to bag, or not to bag, that is the question.

Raking and bagging leaves is a tedious landscaping chore. It means spending countless hours outside, hoping and praying a gust of wind doesn’t come along and undo all your hard work. However, despite your disdain for this tree care have-to, you know that leaving the leaves on the lawn isn’t an option. Or is it?

Many homeowners believe in the power of mulching. Tree care experts say it is a common misunderstanding that using a lawn mower to mulch leaves is bad for your turf or landscape. Quite the contrary, actually. But mulching the leaves and cutting them up into teeny tiny little bits, you will create a buffet of nutrients and organic matter on which your landscape can feed and thrive, all thanks to your beautiful ornamentals.

In addition to the nutritional benefit and the fact that mulching leaves with a lawn mower requires less time and effort, tree care specialists say there is also an environmental benefit. Unless you use the brown leaf bags provided by Lowe’s or The Home Depot, you’re probably filling plastic bags and hoping the garbage men don’t get too nosy when loading your trash into the compactor. These plastic bags will end up in landfills, taking up even more room and putting a material (plastic) into the ground that will never decompose.

So the next time your landscape is covered with leaves, tree care authorities recommend revving up the mower and getting those leaves mulched!