Leaf Litter for Tiny Critters

We got a fair amount of snow in the Twin Cities metro yesterday. Judging by how much I shoveled off the deck, I’d say around 4 inches that was light and easy to move. It was preceded by rain a couple days before, which was a good thing. We’ve been in drought conditions and, as a friend of mine always says, we needed the rain.

It’s been unseasonably mild this fall, with temps in the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit for most of it. This weekend, we shoveled; last weekend we picked up leaves, long after most of our neighbors had.

At our old house in central Minnesota, we had a backyard enclosed by bushes and trees, which allowed us to let the leaves lay on the ground until spring without worrying what the neighbors would think. This leaf litter provided great habitat for tiny critters – insects, mice, birds, etc. In the spring, robins would flock to the yard to peck through the leaves for insects, which was a delight to watch.

We often mulched it with the lawn mower, which allowed the leaves to compost into the grass, building up the soil. After 30 years of lackadaisical lawn care, allowing leaves to build up in the bushes and trees surrounding our yard, our soil was noticeably higher than that of our conscientious neighbor, who cleaned up their leaves every fall.

Now we have a yard that has lots of trees, but very little in the way of bushes naturally fencing in the yard, just one small strip of pines and arbor vitae in the back. The rest of the yard is open, so our leaves can blow around the neighborhood. We can’t really leave them in the fall for the tiny critters. We have to mulch or pick them up so as not to bother the neighbors.

We mostly mulched them, so that leaf litter will become compost for the grass and soil. We had several large piles to pick up, which resulted in 28 lawn and leaf bags full.

I would like to shake the hand of whoever invented the large brown paper bags specifically for yard waste. For the longest time, retailers sold plastic bags for yard waste, which was terrible for the environment. We’d put our leaves in large black plastic bags and leave them on the curb for the city to pick up one day in the fall and one day in the spring. City workers would empty the leaves into their truck and pile the bags into a heap on the lawn, so we could throw them away. They’d end up in a landfill, where they’d be buried and take eons to decompose. The brown paper bags decompose more readily and, depending on how they are disposed of, can become natural compost.

Bit by bit, we are making strides in lawn care that are more beneficial to the larger natural environment. The brown paper leaf bags are part of that. So are lawns that are turned into vegetable or pollinator gardens. Our city actively encourages residents to plant pollinator gardens, which is a refreshing change from ordinances that assume the only good yard plant is Kentucky Blue Grass that must be kept shorter than 6 inches.

If only we could encourage people to keep some leaf litter in their yards, rather than vacuuming up every scrap. As I was bagging leaves, it dawned on me that we could start a program like the one where corn farmers leave a couple of rows standing in their fields for deer. For those who love fall yardwork, they could pick up most of their leaves as they normally do, but urge them to leave leaf litter in their flower beds, in their hedges, and maybe a little under their trees … enough to provide shelter for bugs, birds, and small animals, akin to pollinator gardens for bees.

In fact, the National Park Service already recommends leaving the leaves on the ground in the fall because they are critical habitat for pollinators.

We left leaves in our flower beds around the house and under the row of pines and arbor vitae in our backyard.

Hopefully, this trend will catch on and leaf litter for tiny critters will become the new fashion in fall lawn care.