To Leave or Not To Leave The Leaves: Do You Really Need To Rake Your Lawn?

Ah, raking the lawn, a time-honored chore that has wasted many an afternoon.

What makes this particular chore extra special is that as soon as you turn your back, it seems like every leaf still left on your trees decides to fall…so you have to do the raking dance all over again.

Will your lawn shrivel and die if you don’t rake your leaves?

The truth is that the leaves themselves don’t actually hurt your lawn. You could leave them be if the weather holds, and your grass won’t suffocate. However, your lawn may run into some trouble when the snow falls – and we all know the snow will eventually come to Boise.

Believe it or not, there is such a thing as “snow mold”, which is an icky pink or gray fungal disease that can pop up if you have a pile of snow atop a layer of leaves. Trust us, you don’t want your children to be building a fort in the backyard, only to roll up a fungus-filled pink snowball!

Even if the snow fungus doesn’t hit your lawn, the leaves you leftover winter won’t magically disappear or disintegrate when the snow melts. You’ll still have a lawn filled with slimy leaves on top of your grass, which doesn’t really bode well for a fresh, green spring lawn.

It’s probably a good idea to rake your lawn

Of course, there are some alternatives. You could gather up your leaves and add them to your compost pile to create some nice fertilizer for the spring. (Note: leaves will not just compost by themselves. You need to make sure you turn them in regularly in the composter and add appropriate amounts of water.)

Another option is to wait until the leaves are crunchy and then mow them. Yep, you read that right, mow your leaves into teeny tiny pieces. This blanket of leaf bits will actually act like mulch and protect your lawn and garden.

You don’t have to rake your leaves yourself!

You can hire us to do it. Here at Nature’s Elite Lawn & Landscape, we are ready, rakes in hand, to get those leaves off your lawn so you never even have to consider the possibility of snow fungus.

We can rake your leaves, put your leaves in your composter, or even mow your leaves if you want to go the mulch route. And when your lawn turns into leaf country by the next weekend, we can come back again and do it all over.

We provide leaf raking and fall clean-up of lawns and gardens in Boise, Eagle, Meridian, and Boise Valley.

Call us today to learn about our fall cleanup services.