I watched as a maintenance crew worked in a yard the other day, one man walking through the beds wielding a leaf blower as his helper followed with a mower equipped with a bag mowing through and picking up the leaves. What is wrong with that picture? We purchase our compost and mulch products from a firm in town (not the only firm that does this) that makes a business out of recycling yard waste by empting the same bags full of grass clippings and leaves that came out of probably the same yard, composting them, adding other elements (ground tree prunings, topsoil, yard waste) and selling them to landscape companies to supplement beds (compost products) and mulch those same beds (shredded bark products).

People actually pay crews to REMOVE extremely viable, nutrient rich materials from their yards and then BUY the same material back a few months later. The truth is that the leaves that end up in your beds are a very valuable source of nutrients that offer your plants a host of beneficial services – nutrient base, water holding capacity and as the leaf mat builds, the ability to hold down weed growth. The best way to handle the leaves in your beds is to incorporate them into the beds rather than remove them. This is done by a practice called “cultivation”, the act of turning the leaf material into the garden soil.

Our horticultural management team does this 4 times a year for our management clients. It should be done a minimum of twice a year. By utilizing this material you add the valuable material directly to the soil and set up a composting cycle immediately around the base of your ornamentals so that the root zones get the maximum benefit. The use of the blower in the beds does nothing more than remove this material AND the mulch you paid for.

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