Each year, fall brings cooler weather, vibrant trees, and of course, the pesky task of raking your leaves. Many homeowners watch their neighbors spend hours raking the leaves off their lawn religiously every weekend and wonder “Is this really necessary?” While you might be tempted to skip out on your raking duties this year, we recommend doing just the opposite. Continue reading to discover the importance of clearing all those fall leaves from your lawn.

The Dangers Of Leaving Leaves On Your Grass

As it turns out, raking your lawn provides more benefits than just making it look tidy. Your lawn requires sunlight, water, and air in order to thrive. When a significant portion of your lawn is covered with leaves, it is being smothered and deprived of the things it needs most to survive.

Some of the dangers of allowing leaves to cover your grass include:

  • Smothered grass is the perfect environment for mold and fungus growth
  • A cover of leaves makes a perfect and inviting shelter for tons of different types of pests
  • Smothered grass often will not survive the winter
  • Grass that dies during winter will often fail to reemerge during the next spring
  • Covered grass often invites diseases

How Much Leaf Coverage Is Ok?

The problems listed above typically only occur when 20% or more of a lawn is covered with leaves. As long as the majority of your lawn has plenty of access to sunlight, water, air, and other nutrients it needs to survive, your lawn should be just fine. In fact, leaving a few leaves is actually good for your lawn as crushed leaves can provide some key nutrients to your plants and lawn when they decompose.

Purple Care Makes Fall Maintenance Easy

Raking your leaves every week can be a pain. The last thing you want is to spend your whole weekend outside cleaning up leaves just to have to do it all over again the next week. When your landscape is too much to keep up with, turn to Purple Care. Our team of professional landscapers offers complete lawn care services, including maintenance and mowing, leaf cleanup and removal, fertilization, soil amendments, fungus and disease control, lawn aeration, and weed control. We are here to make fall landscape maintenance easy as can be so you can focus on more important matters!

To schedule landscaping services, call Purple Care at (817) 880-6052.