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Verify: To rake or not to rake?

The leaves are changing colors and falling to the ground. The question is what to do with them once they're on the ground.

CLEVELAND - Well, it’s that time of year. The leaves are changing colors and falling to the ground. The question is what to do with them once they’re on the ground. Do you rake them up or leave them?

There’s been a differencing of opinions on this topic since the rake was invented. Leaves falling to the ground is a natural thing, so you should be able to just ignore them, right? That’s what an article by Mary Bowerman of USA Today suggested and when posted on the WKYC Facebook page, the comments came pouring in.

Melanie wrote that she left her leaves last year and now she has patches all over the yard. However, Debra says her leafy yard last year gave birth to a quote “very, very, green lawn” so who’s right?

“Alright, so there’s a happy medium in between,” says Amy Roskilly, the conservation education program manager at the Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District. “Not saying that you should really leave all of your leaves on there and not saying that you should rake them all away. You mulch up your leaves and you leave them on your lawn in small pieces. The additional leaves, the bigger ones, you can rake them into your garden and those are going to provide those nutrients into your soil and provide habitat for wildlife throughout the winter. So you want to meet in the middle there.”

So basically, leave the leaves but don’t leave them where they lie. Did you catch that? Don’t worry about bagging and sending them off to landfills, but you don’t want to suffocate your lawn either.

“If you just have one leaf hanging out there, one layer of leaf, it’s going to break down. It’s the pile of leaves that’s going to cause those yellow spots and kill your lawn,” says Roskilly.

The added bonus is by using the leaves as a natural alternative to mulch and fertilizer in your gardens and flower beds, you’ll save money next spring. You’re also saving space in landfills where the EPA says yard waste and food scraps make up between 20 and 30 percent of what we throw away.

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