Some of them I compost. Otherwise I just run over them with a bag on the mower and spread on my beds. If a bunch blow in from the neighbors, I just mulch them where they are and let them feed the lawn.

Leaves are mulch. Do as cooper8828 suggests and save time, money and wild life.

DH runs over them with the mower, which has a collector can on the back; he empties them on or near the beds for me, and I spread them as mulch when I have time -- they're very light, especially when dry, so I don't think that would be too taxing on you. We also store what I know I won't have time to spread in a big mulch pile outside, and cover it with tarp for the winter; I work thru that pile in the spring and summer. I'll tell you -- I'm always glad I have that extra mulch, there's always a need for it and it's F-R-E-E.

As an aside, I've never had any problem using oak leaves as long as they're shredded/chopped up first - no need to be scared off because you have oaks.

Many butterflies and moths over winter in leaf debris. When was the last time you saw a Luna Moth? We are chopping and/or blowing them apart as part of an obsession with a perfect yards. I use an electric blower and gently blow leaves from walkways into beds. The oak leaves don’t break down well and that makes an excellent mulch - that I don’t have to buy. Cleaning up brown leaves and replacing with dyed brown wood chips makes no sense. All of my plants grow thru it in the spring with minimal cleanup in May - after our beneficial insects have awoken. This is an excellent article to start research. https://xerces.org/blog/leave-the-leaves

Leave the leaves and move to native plant species that have evolved to be happy with growing up through a layer of leaves. The fallen leaves are critical habitat for many beneficial insects that provide the base of the food chain that supports the birds and small mammals--chopping them up destroys much of that habitat and kills many of those overwintering insects. The intact leaf layer is also much more effective at blocking weed germination and growth. The leaf layer allows the system to work the way it's supposed to. Yes, it's a slightly different aesthetic that takes a bit of a shift in mindset, but ultimately you will find it's less work, lower cost, and a huge improvement in supporting your local ecosystem. Just one example-- we've increased our firefly population by a factor of 10 since banishing the fall/spring cleanup routine, from just a few to a dazzling display in early summer. Just one obvious indicator of an overall improvement in the health of our yard.

one key is to shred them when they are dry ...

oak are some of the best... the woirsst like maples.. mat and can create an anerobic mat.. that doesnt allow air movement in and out of the soil... they literally stink as the stuff under rots ....

but as noted... if you can shed them into smaller pieces... the mat is avoided ...

what you cant use on the gardens.. pile up.. turn the pile in mid summer.. and by next fall you will have some magnificent humus ... the good soil additive.. not the chick pea stuff.. lol ....

ken

I blow leaves into a pile and then mow over them (with a bagger) and toss then them onto the garden and also bag any extra in heavy duty construction bags to store for next year. It takes longer, but on the other hand I have free mulch. Maybe your guy will be willing to change his technique.

Oak leaves are a pain. Our oaks don't lose most of their leaves until early spring/late winter causing an impenetrable thick mat in gardens that block emerging flower seeds. They do take forever to break down. I try to cut down as much as possible in the fall so the oak leaves are easier to clean out or they can blow into the lawn where it is easier to pick up with the mower.

Chopping, mowing, shredding is literally killing butterflies. This is a pic of the chrysalis of one type of swallowtail overwintering. Our yard care practices are leading to huge losses in pollinators and song birds (which feed babies caterpillers). Please read on the subject (Doug Talamy an excellent source) before this year’s mass destruction begins.

I feel like I am the unofficial uneducated queen of oak mulch. My take: My property and surrounding lots are covered up in red and white oaks. They make a thick tarp-like mat that works hard to smother all beneath. I cannot in any way control the tarp in my garden because winter southern winds are usually gales, but fortunately not common, and immeidately blow all leaves from the woods right into the garden. i have tried barriers, etc., but it’s way too much work. I resort to finding what lives with it. When I say tarp, I mean at the end of each winter I can a couple of inches of a compressed wet leathery oak leaf layer.

My trees turn a lovely brown each fall. Not red or orange or yellow. From an ornamental garden perspective they are a huge negative. But, I LOVE my trees because I know every day of the year they are creating wildlife. They are considered the most valuable tree species in New England for insect/spider life. Over 400 species use my trees all year long. Now to protect the little guys like in brdrl’s photo I leave the garden as it is instead of fighting a losing battle and have learned what plants can handle it.

My husband has no involvement in garden or yard EXCEPT he wants a yard cleanuup in fall. He is not interested in a perfect yard, so we kind of have less and less ”yard” and more and more ”tree edge.” The clean-up, mulching with a lawnmower, is the only thing we do to damage insect life. Winter winds usually whip the yard clean in winter, but only if we get rid of the huge fall drop first.

With the drought this year, mulch is too valuable so I will be more faithful in adding fresh wood mulch each year. The leaf tarp is often so thick I have to remove the leaves in summer to add wood mulch (after the insects have all hatched, etc.). I do it for looks in certain parts of the garden. The leaves make great mulch, but there are too many to rake out and chop up come early summer so they stay in the garden as they fell. They don’t seem to decompose as well inside the mulch when compared to soil so I usually don’t put mulch right on top of the leaves, but try to expose soil, then replace leaves and then mulch. Easier than it sounds. The good news is I can create thick mounds of leaves around bushes, etc., then cover with mulch and all weeds are suppressed. a couple of years ago I did a 1-foot layer of leaves around hostas in the woods (no additional wood mulch) and it suppressed all the grass wonderfully, but fortunately the trout lilies came right through.

I have many seedlings that can emerge right through the tarp, which has been a pleasant surprise. Lambs ear never dies, but it does stay mushy and new growth is poor only on the portion of the plant covered by winter’s oak leaves. I feel like my brunnera and lungwort are always struggling to emerge from the leaves and looks mangy, but they recover well, especially if I remove the leaves in early summer. I leave the stems up on my perennials like echinacea, joe pye weed, basically all of them, and it seems to reduce any crown rot because the stems protect the crowns. At least, that’s what I assume.

the stems are the only thing that capture the leaves and hold them down when they blow, but they hold them around the crown and do not compress the leaves down.

I have nearly given up on anything that needs dry crowns in winter. Even if I clear the crown, all it takes is a bad nor-easter and they are covered up again.

My habit now—it’s easier to let them stay all four seasons overall, rake them from the few species that need it in early summer, live with the reseeders that can germinate well (which is surprisingly many), and have plants in the garden that can handle it (which is suprisingly many). I am young enough to do a huge clean-up come early summer, but I do NOT have the time. I am pleased with the results of knowing only small areas need some leaf removal while letting the leaves stay where plants do well and decompose there naturally. I need easy because I am close to losing all teenagers and there is no way I can do all of the traditional leaf-shredding maintenance on my own without making it a full-time job, it seems.

Read up on voles before you change your habits. They may be mostly a New England problem, but they are here, and they are a problem you do not want.

Leaf-drop time this fall will be interesting here this year as we finally gave up the battle with EAB and had the large, old, sick white ash tree taken down this spring. That tree produced a lot of leaf litter - and tree seedlings! The leaves that fell into beds were left there and the ones that fell on the lawn got raked into beds. We also have a red oak that has the spring and fall leaf issues others have mentioned. We had one large lower limb on it removed. Otherwise what we do is use a mulching leaf vacuum blower to shred the leaves that accumulate along the fence and in beds and then added the shredded leaves as mulch in the beds under the oak. We initially just left the leaves where they fell but the mulching leaf blower help them breakdown faster. I don’t know why landscape maintenance companies don’t use them as standard equipment! It is easy and works well/is good for the soil. The only ’standard’ wood mulch we use is hemlock bark on paths every couple of years. Foliage prone to disease (e.g. peonies) or tall quasi-woody stuff (e.g. hardy hibiscuses and Persicaria polymorpha) get cut down and removed in fall but all the rest is left to’ to’ compost in place’. It will be interesting to see what effect the ash tree removal and the limbing-up of the oak has on the fall work this year…

mad gallica - re voles, can you confirm that mulching after hard freeze is ok?

For us - no leaf blowers! I can imagine that on large properties in some situations, it's a game changer and I would probably use one too. I'm happy I don't have to, because I really dislike the method and the noise.

As for chopping and mowing - I'm not following. How are insects bothered by mowing the lawn, as anyone with a lawn does every week or two weeks all gardening season? We allow leaves to drop and collect on their own under the trees and only mow the existing lawn and add those chopped up leaves and grass clippings as a mulch for the veggie beds in the fall. I also use them for making lasagna beds in perennial beds that need some TLC for the soil.

Mulching with bark mulch we leave for the spring.

Is there something about our routine that is contributing to preventing insects from wintering over?

I’ve always raked the leaves from my beds every spring. Maple leaves that is.

It became such a big (dreaded) job with having so many beds. So this year, I mainly just raked out the plants and left the leaves in between them, with the exception of some badly matted areas. It was much easier on the back, so I will continue in this manner.

I really need to mulch many areas, and I have a pile of bagged mulch just waiting to be put down. Its been waiting for several years now........ : /

Kitasei2, why would you think mulching after a hard frost would be OK? The voles aren't looking for a nice warm place to live, but lunch. Anything that doesn't hibernate, or store a vast winter supply of food has to be out there in the cold hunting. So mulch means voles can hunt roots, but the hawks can't hunt them.

One of my worst beds for vole damage is right next to the road. So it is buried under a pile of snow for much of the winter, and the voles are digging through hard packed snow to reach those plants.

I don’t have any mole/vole damage in my mulched beds - they destroy the lawn

We have voles (as well as moles, mice, chipmunks, groundhogs, etc) in abundance. Aside from winter damage under the snow line to very young fruit trees a number of years ago (solved by applying a plastic wrap during the winter months) I've never noticed them doing anything particularly bothersome around the yard. Of course anything that destroys European turf grass in our yard is regarded as a beneficial contributor ;-)

This spring we had red tail, broad wing and Cooper's hawks as well as great horned and barred owls nesting in the immediate neighborhood and hunting our meadow on a daily basis, which I very much enjoy watching.

My best vole sighting was a couple of years ago while I was mowing the meadow. A fox, who was obvously familiar with farms and the opportunities created there, followed about 50 feet behind me and proceeded to breakfast on 6-8 of them as they were flushed out by the mower going over.

Our neighborhood Great Horned Owls have been bringing babies to hunt in our yard. I wish they hunted for squirrels during the day! We do have occasional hawks because we feed the birds. I suspect that birdfeed is a another food the voles like. Almost every morning I step onto the deck and find a line of voles. Little presents from the cats.

I pile some of my leaves on Mac hydrangeas to help winter protect them. Although, it doesn't seem to work very well. The rest I pick up with the mower and spread under plants. I inherited a huge maple and if I let the leaves sit, half my yard would be dirt. Every tree I've planted I make sure don't produce leaves that need removal. Like honey locust for example.

PrairieMoon - this is an explanation from Xerces, the problem isn’t mowing the grass throught the seasons but chopping the fallen leaves in autumn. ”In fact, the vast majority of butterflies and moths overwinter in the landscape as an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, or adult. In all but the warmest climates, these butterflies use leaf litter for winter cover. Great spangled fritillary and wooly bear caterpillars tuck themselves into a pile of leaves for protection from cold weather and predators. Red-banded hairstreaks lay their eggs on fallen oak leaves, which become the first food of the caterpillars when they emerge. Luna moths and swallowtail butterflies disguise their cocoons and chrysalises as dried leaves, blending in with the “real” leaves.”

Hi brdrl - I understand that insects overwinter in leaves, On my property, I have three trees - 2 mature Maples and 1 mature Japanese Maple. I have a small 1/4 acre. But I am surrounded by other Maples along my lot line and Spruce trees. A total of 7 mature maples within 5ft of my lot line. So there are plenty of leaves in our yard. I don't remove them from the shrub or perennial beds that cover 3 sides of the property line. We have a small lawn, that we don't rake, we mow it with the leaves on it and dump those on top of the veggie beds for organic matter. So I'm thinking there is plenty of habitat for insects over the winter.

So, my question was, is there any reason for me not to mow my lawn when there are plenty of undisturbed areas on the property. Thanks for answering my question! 😀

PM, when we mow our lawn in fall I can be assured that there are many acres around me with plenty of habitat, too! We are not in a high-density population area, so I’ve got plenty of undisturbed area around me, including an empty lot next door. (Maybe it’s not really empty if it’s covered in natural growth!) Isn’t it nice to be surrounded by that?

Hi Deanna, You are lucky to have undisturbed areas around you! I do not have any. My neighborhood of suburban/urban small lots are for the most part, lawn from lot line to lot line. I think there are maybe 5 neighbors who garden to one extent or the other in an area of about 8 blocks. [g] Some yards barely have a shrub in them. I have some neighbors who are determined to kill every mosquitoe and tick on their property with those services that fog the property. *sigh* I'm lucky if I see an insect.

ooo, my next door nieghbor sprays. I have always hoped the insects headed my way. That empty lot is a great neighbor!

Are voles the ones that will pull a small plant downward into the ground? This is striking when you see it happen — David Copperfield style.

I think that’s what I had nesting amoung my blueberrie plants in a protected netted ”cage.” They are gorgeous looking and clean. They remind me of a miniature woodchuck.

Here is an article about voles. Be sure to read about their compassionate behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vole

“Empathy and consolation[edit]

A 2016 study into the behavior of voles, Microtus ochrogaster specifically, found that voles comfort each other when mistreated, spending more time grooming a mistreated vole. Voles that were not mistreated had levels of stress hormones that were similar to the voles that had been mistreated, suggesting that the voles were capable of empathizing with each other. This was further proven by blocking the vole's receptors for oxytocin, a hormone involved in empathy. When the oxytocin receptors were blocked this behavior stopped.[29]

This type of empathetic behavior has previously been thought to occur only in animals with advanced cognition such as humans, apes and elephants.”

For leaves, we mow/vacuum up some, leave some for the wind to blow from the lawn into gardens or across the road. Sometimes we use huge wide bamboo rakes and sweep them onto a tarp. We can take them into our wood area, put in the rhodi and acid shrub areas. With extras, we mound them into a large wire mesh cylinder where they can decompose and create shelter for Ixodes scapularis (deer ticks). We are not neatnick garden and yard keepers. Oak and maple leaves can mat down on grass, so if you have a lot, you might want to rake some of them. I used to go out and collect pine needles and cones for mulch and compost.

We’ve given up fussing with our ”ggrass” lawn because I don’t want to use chemicals (deep well water). So we get weeds, and in the fall sometimes starling will decend for a grub feast. We have lost of songbirds including thrashers and thrush. Now the grass has been invaded by some purple flowered herb, ”self heal.” ;-(

I haven't seen one like this in our garden. I have the moles that appear blind and have pink little feet and are long and thin. And I have the chipmunks.

I've always put all leaves on flower beds and they disappear so quickly. When I lived where people bag leaves, I would take other people's leaves and use them too. I've not had any problems with plants being able to come up in the spring, either in OH or AL.

You could pile them between shrubs and spread further in the spring if desired with a metal rake, not a flexible plastic one. That takes too much effort and back strain to do that kind of job. Never found that step necessary unless doing it because other areas looked too bare.

If you're concerned about the leaves disappearing quickly enough, go to a bait store and get some worms and scatter them into the leafy areas.

I'm surprised blowers are blowing all of the mulch away. A layer that is 4-6" deep should stay moist and heavy enough to stay in place. If it is thinner than that, it might just look like debris, especially if grass is coming through it in places.. Is there some kind of barrier to separate grassy areas from bed areas?

"When I lived where people bag leaves, I would take other people's leaves and use them too."

HAHA, yea, it's that time of year again. I live not far from a chi-chi neighborhood where there's an abundance of trees and the lawn services shred and bag the leaves -- score!! I usually take DH's truck out in the wee weekend morning hours before people can see I'm loading up the back with bags of what they think is garbage (yes, I am embarrassed to have anyone see me doing this LOL!). Double bonus -- I can store the bags in the horse stalls = out of the way and stay nice and dry all winter, ready to use anytime needed during the upcoming season. So I've been picking up 20+ bags every fall.

DH didn't believe me when I told him I would use it all -and- the leaves he collected for me...he doesn't doubt me anymore LOL!

There’s no one good answer for oak leaf management. I have the dreaded sweet gums also.
I have many of the same concerns because am getting older - still doing pretty vigorous yard work but at some point…
There’s no good way to manage personally if you can’t rake, blow, drag or mow somehow. Because just leaving them where nature distributes them doesn’t work for me. We will get big drifts against the house, or deforming shrubs, or similar, and not in areas that need leaf litter or mulch. Because… nature.
I also get the dreaded oak sprouts on rocky sloped areas that can’t be mowed.
In fact one aspect of yearly leaf fall is, when do the acorns come down. There’s a timeframe when first leaf fall is score- free- I gather those for compost— then a bunch of acorns plus leaves on deck & drive- these I have to “ give away”- then some more less-acorn leaf fall that I can gather or shred at least some of, according to how much energy I have.
I am trying to plan some leaf- litter “ zones” in the mote inhospitable areas of my property- yes, leaf- blowers are noisy but I have acquired a lightweight one for this purpose, of trying some re- distribution that works for maintaining clearer zones as needed for humans but allows some accumulation where possible, because we have box turtles traversing the property and I wish to encourage them.
I rake up & put whole leaves in a couple of composters. I shred some with a standing shredder.

I haven't noticed any acorns around the huge oak I have out by the road -- my money is on the wildlife gobbling them up. What I do have is black walnuts and some sort of other shells on the drive that are broken apart so obviously the wildlife is having at whatever nuts or seeds those are. The black walnuts are usually cleaned up after a few weeks by the critters, too.

I just read this today.

Why experts say you shouldn't bag your leaves this fall

https://apple.news/ATuak4w2vTOeaGIBE15_jKQ

As leaves across America make their annual autumn pilgrimage from the treetops to the ground, lawn and wildlife experts say it's better to leave them around than to bag them.

First, because it keeps leaves out of landfills. Every year, about 8 million tons of leaves end up there.

And second, because leaves help the grass.

Leaves are full of nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

I think kept green lawns are pretty, but there is a cost. We live in a quasi rural setting amid huge tracts of conservation and water supply acreage. There is a bird sanctuary nearby and the region is part of a flyway. Our household relies on deep well water, and so we are careful what we put on our gardens/lawns.

I’d be fine with pretty much only light and infrequent mowing or our (now weedy) ”lawn” areas. I occasionally put lime down far away from our blueberries and acid loving plants and patch of ”mayflower” — Epigaea repens, trailing arbutus.

Guess where the most lush, greenest grass can be found? 1. beneath and around one of the abslute bird feeders (BOS) and 2. down yonder by the stone wall, wood margin and compost pile. Lovely green grass. Bird droppings give the bird to the black sunflower seed husks.

PS Unfortunately, for those who want to sell their homes, most buyers want a traditional green lawn.

For the mulch problem, get an electric leaf blower and blow the leaves onto the lawn before the pros come. It's not much work and keeps thethem out of your beds.

Sigrid, yes that is a good idea. If I know when they are coming! But have been thinking more about how to coordinate my labors with our paid services.