Nature and Gardening

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All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.

See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.

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102

Trust in nature – and stop raking up your garden leaves (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Jho@beehaw.org to c/greenspace@beehaw.org

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Some choice quotes from the article:

[S]pent leaves that flutter to the ground aren’t a waste product. They are rich in carbon and play an essential role for the tree and the ecology it supports.

The leaves act as a physical barrier for soil, keeping it and its many microbes insulated, and also for the tree roots, as the wet mats of autumn leaves shelter the fragile top layer from the drying winds.

Many, many things live in these dead leaf layers: caterpillars of moths and butterflies, their chrysalises, beetles, centipedes, springtails, woodlice and spiders … and doesn’t the blackbird know it, rustling through the leaves?

No one loves wet autumn leaves more than earthworms, though. Sensing one of their favourite things, they start to work on incorporating them into the soil. Earthworms line their homes with autumn leaves, using them for bedding and then, because they are good housekeepers, they eat them as they break down.

Leave the leaves be: they are not a mess, a waste or a hindrance – they are life and vital with it.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 1 year ago

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Large, soft leaves are hard to protect in the winter weather, so the trees evolved to lose them, but not their valuable resources.

The greens of chlorophyll go first, then the yellows of the xanthonoids, and then the orange carotenoids, until all that is left is brown – at which point the tree lets its foliage go.

Many, many things live in these dead leaf layers: caterpillars of moths and butterflies, their chrysalises, beetles, centipedes, springtails, woodlice and spiders … and doesn’t the blackbird know it, rustling through the leaves?

Earthworms line their homes with autumn leaves, using them for bedding and then, because they are good housekeepers, they eat them as they break down.

If you must rake them up because they make the path to your front door too slippery or they have coated the lawn, then return them to the tree.

Rake up the leaves, pile them up in a chicken wire cage or old compost bags with a few extra holes in them (the fungi that break them down need plenty of oxygen) and rot them down for a season or two.

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