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The Deep Middle


Gardening & writing in the prairie echo

Why You Shouldn't Clean Up the Fall Garden

9/24/2019

18 Comments

 
Nature doesn't cut down spent flowers or rake up leaves each autumn, and if we're going to garden for wildlife and less maintenance -- for bees and butterflies and aching backs -- then we need to take nature's lead in the way we garden.

When you walk in a prairie or forest each October there won't be animals putting detritus into compost piles or plastic bags to be hauled away, and I challenge you to get a picture of that occurance. Removing spent material from the garden is removing fertilizer, rich topsoil, habitat, and food -- or simply put, it's gardening against nature.

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Fertilizer
Do you see how trees drop leaves around their root zone? Yes, unless it's super windy. But trees are smart -- they are fertilizing themselves. This is one reason many organic lawn care firms advocate mulching leaves over a lawn (and mulching the lawn during the growing season), because dead leaves are rich in nutrients. The same goes for perennial flowers and grasses in a garden -- leave most of what you cut down in the garden, breaking it up a little by hand if you want to. You can do this in fall but, as we'll see below, it's better to wait until spring.

Topsoil
Leaves and other plant bits are broken down naturally over time by soil life, incorporated into the soil by bugs and micro organisms and bacteria and worms and ants and moles. This adds fertility to the soil and increases water penetration and storage -- it's the cycle of life. When you remove leaves and stems from the garden you are literally removing healthy soil.

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Food
Leaving flower heads full of seed can be critical for winter songbirds whose resources dwindle as the season goes along. Seeds tend to be high in fat content and lots of other good nutrients critical to a bird's ability to produce both energy and heat in the colder months. Of course, once spring comes, flower stems and grass clumps used for food and shelter from snowstorms become prime nesting material.

Habitat
Plenty of creatures overwinter in garden litter, from queen bumblebees to mourning cloak butterflies to black swallowtail larvae to all manor of frogs, spiders, beetles, and bugs. Inside plant stems may be larvae of native bees, since roughly 25% of native bee species use cavities found in wood or stone as nesting sites. This is one reason why, in early to mid spring, you should leave 12-18 inches of stem when cutting back the garden -- you will soon see swarms of bees coming to lay eggs in hollow stems or to excavate pith before egg laying begins. After a few weeks the "ugly" dead stems will soon be covered by new green growth as insects keep doing their thing.

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It's important to see the garden not just as a human space, but also one for other species and for nature in general -- think 50/50 at a minimum. Of course, gardens are about beauty for all species and certainly for us garden makers, and so the question has to be asked: in the depths of winter when there's less obvious beauty, would you rather see a flat moonscape or a rich tapestry of texture, form, and hues of color (brown is a color) with birds flitting in and out? Don't treat your garden like a living room after the kids go to bed, putting all the toys back on to shelves and in storage bins. Let nature be natural and enjoy the show.
18 Comments
Carol
9/25/2019 05:30:15 pm

Does this relate to just gardens or also lawns? We have a Locust tree with numerous SMALL leaves that seems like they’ll smother the grass if not raked up. So should lawn be raked? We also get the neighbors leaves

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Benjamin
9/25/2019 06:15:57 pm

Lawns are different. I think I mention above mulching leaves into the lawn, and that means using a mower to do that. If it's too many leaves you'll need to rake some (and put into your garden beds perhaps).

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Barbara Mackenzie
9/26/2019 01:49:28 pm

My gardens are all covered with 2-3"of mulch. What do you suggest for leaf cleanup in this situation?

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Benjamin
9/26/2019 02:03:04 pm

I would not clean up the leaves. Leaves and mulch will break down together.

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James McGee
9/27/2019 07:04:30 pm

I cut back my New England Asters twice before the fourth of July. This makes them shorter and they have more flowers. I have noticed the bees love to nest in the green stems of my New England Asters after I have cut them back.

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Jill Trachte link
10/1/2019 07:53:32 am

I leave my garden alone all winter. In spring I just walk through it stamping all the spent flowers and grasses to the ground. Now I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to leave them stand 12-18”high as you suggest.

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Martha Intrieri
10/1/2019 10:55:40 am

Good writing.

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K Smith
10/6/2019 04:19:09 pm

I plant cover crops over winter in vegetable garden: radish, crimson clover, pea, oats. By April 1 they have become a brown carpet. I like crops that establish nitrogen or serve as till plants. I leave root systems in the ground. Sunflowers work well also. I believe in having plant life in the garden all year long.

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Ronda Spink
10/7/2019 07:58:59 am

I love this article! One correction though, the Black Swallowtail Butterfly overwinters as a chrysalis not as a larvae.

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Therese link
10/7/2019 12:21:59 pm

Thank you so much for writing and sharing this information.

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Dana C Regan
10/8/2019 08:24:31 am

Does this apply to vegetable gardens too?

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Benjamin
10/8/2019 08:28:51 am

Nope. That's a different beast. We just discuss ornamental gardens here.

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James McGee
10/12/2019 06:51:30 am

If leaves are left on a lawn they will kill it. I rake the leaves off my lawn and chop them up with a mower. Chopping them up with a mower keeps then from blowing away. I then lay the chopped leaves around my ornamental plants and mulch my vegetable garden with them. A thick layer of chopped leaves in a vegetable garden will prevent weeds. I mix fertilizer into the planting holes and plant my vegetables right into the chopped up leaves. The vegetables send root through the chopped up leaves which turn into soil as the season progresses. I'm sure this would work just as well when planting and during the establishment phase of an ornamental garden.

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James McGee
10/13/2019 10:10:08 pm

I don't suggest other people do the following, unless they have received training and experience. However, I wanted to ask you, "What do you think about burning native plant gardens when appropriate (prairie, sedge meadow, savanna, oak woodland)?"

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Tay E MacIntyre
10/20/2019 11:47:36 am

Does anyone know of an affordable way to chip or shread huge or tough stems ( my cosmos are 8 feet tall and stems bigger than my thumb around) so I can add them to compost or soil in beds after winter?

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James McGee
10/27/2019 08:02:45 pm

Benjamin has a moral belief that people should not be growing non-native plants like Cosmos. If you were growing native plants, then he would tell you to break the stems up with your hands and put them right back on the garden leaving a foot of stem standing for nesting bees.

I put any herbaceous stems from cleaning up my gardens in my compost pile, sieve the compost once it is finished, and then put it back on the garden. Once the stems have broken down they will go through the sieve. Benjamin’s method eliminates these extra steps. I only use my chipper for woody material that breaks down slowly when composted. After I chip the woody material, I use it to mulch my garden. If you think you really need a chipper for your Cosmos stems, then there are plenty of electric chippers available at a reasonable cost.

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Amy Crow link
3/22/2020 01:31:22 pm

Thank you for sharing this article. I leave everything standing, leaves on my gardens, and intentional brush piles fot wildlife. I also provide water for birds in the winter, along with bird seed. My yard is completely organic and pesticide free...

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Vancouver Landscaping link
2/25/2021 08:18:01 pm

Most people clean up their garden in fall, mostly because this has been the tradition, but also because they want their garden to look good over the winter. The reality is that for the benefit of your plants, and the environment, you should leave the garden alone in fall and do the cleanup in spring.

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    Benjamin Vogt's thoughts on prairie gardening in Nebraska. With a healthy dose of landscape ethics, ecophilosophy, climate change,  and social justice.

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