Some prefer to mow and not blow or bag

I find one of the strangest urban practices to be the bagging of fall leaves. I find it downright weird. I didn't do it as a kid and I don't do it now.

My dad was a farmer before his health forced him to quit and move to the city. He taught me that leaves will break down and disappear back into the soil if treated correctly. He called leaves nature's fertilizer. We were poor and my dad was not about to discard free fertilizer.

We had a small, open-topped, caged-off area at the back of our yard, created with a heavy gauge wire mesh. We tossed our raked leaves, along with any grass clippings when we had them, which was rarely, into that cage. The coffee grounds from our percolator, if you have to ask google it, were also dumped there to be mixed with the leaves. The leaves always took longer to decompose than anticipated but they did break down eventually.

The London Free Press reports city leaf collection extended.

Today, I have a different, even easier, approach. I mow them rather than rake them. My electric lawn mower is called a mulcher and does not even have an ejector shoot. Grass clippings and leaves are chopped small and left on the lawn.

When I started writing this post, I realized it was all conjecture. I did a little research. It didn't take long to confirm that dad was onto something. According to the Princeton Primer, the makers of Scotts Miracle Grow have studied this approach and concluded mulched leaves not only provide valuable fertilizer but the mulch does not result in problems with thatch as some have argued.

Whether ground up or piled in a corner, leaves serve as a natural fertilizer and increase the capacity of the yard to absorb rain. The more organic matter a yard contains, the more moisture it can hold, which helps buffer the yard from extremes of rain and drought. A soil rich in organic matter welcomes the rain, which in turn reduces runoff into the streets and, collectively, the amount of flooding downstream.

One doesn't have to be a Princeton grad to understand that when "nature's miraculous trash-free economy is allowed to function, we're spared a big mess in the streets and the considerable municipal cost of hauling, grinding and mechanically turning leaves at a distant composting centre."