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See, I did the whole "leave the leaves" thing last year and it completely killed the vegetation under my big maple tree. It was kind of nice since it gave me a chance to replace that grass with clover, but now I don't want the clover to die.
It's been a year and we still have maple leaves from last year that haven't decomposed. Not quite sure what I'm supposed to do.
If you have a backyard full of trees/shade, they will never dry.
Leave them over winter which is when they provide key shelter/food. Winter is killing the grass anyway, and then mow them in the spring to shred them and help them decompose. We mow ours in june and they were gone a month later.
It's one big maple in the front yard, and it only killed the grass in a circle under the thickest part of the canopy. Come spring we had a brown circle that only dandelions were growing in with grass doing just fine outside the circle.
I do think part of the problem could have been the extremely wet fall & winter we had. Felt like the rain never stopped.
Leaving all of them is in itself a human impact on the environment, you wouldnt find a single maple in a forest, but you also wouldnt find a field in a forest. if youre concerned about bugs I'd still be removing at least some leaves
really theyre a resource I'd collect them for compost heaps
A cool solution I’ve seen is mowing the leaves, then raking them across the yard. sounds counter intuitive but they break down/blow away wayyyy faster is smaller pieces, while still cycling their nutrients back into the local ecosystem