Why I Oughta...

These are the days for filling up our compost bins.  Each Fall, the leaves in our yard drop all of their annual leaves and I use the mower to mulch them up and pick A LOT of them up off the grass .  My process is actually a little nuanced in terms of mulching vs. bagging.  I use my Ego leaf blower to clean out the beds and push all the leaves to the middle of the yard on the grass.  From there, I use my mower - with the bag attached - set to the lowest level to begin to mulch-up and vacuum all the leaves.   However, I don't immediately clear the mower bag once it is full.  If you've done this (like I do), you know when the bag is full because you start to see dust and little leaf parts flying around because there's no place for them to get ejected into the bag, so they kind of fly out the sides.  I'm doing that on purpose - so I leave a little bit of leaf litter (mulched up, mind you) behind on the lawn to feed the soil. But, after doing that for ...

 One of the items on my early Fall garden task list is to divide up some of my hostas.  I usually do this in Spring and I think that causes many of them to be delayed a bit and not reach their potential in the growing season.  I've read around and it seems that there's mixed views :  some divide in Fall.  Some in Spring.  So, that's what I'm going to do:  divide some in the Fall.  After having divided a lot in the Spring.  Seems like the month of September is the month to divide.  I figure I'll give these a go right after Labor Day.  Cooling temperatures, but still enough time to establish themselves before going dormant with Winter. Here, below, is an inventory of some of the hostas that I think are ready to be divided.  By my count, there are 9 eligible specimens.  Dividing these will give me nine new plants to add to the beds.  For no cost and just a little bit of effort.  What's not to love about that?  ...

By the time the middle of November comes around, I've been doing leaf clean-up in our yard for at least four weeks.  We get early drops (Walnut), constant drops (Catalpa, Maple, Kentucky Coffee Tree) and late drops (Oaks) and it lasts more than a month.  If I waited until they all came down, it would be a huge mess.  Not that it isn't a good idea.  It just isn't how I address the situation.  When I started this year, I spent time using the mower and bagged up all the leaves as they dropped - by mowing about once per week.  I filled our compost bins pretty quickly.   But, with our bins filled, what do I do with leaves still on the grass?  I decided to try something new this year:  I just mulched them in the lawn.   You can see it below - this is mostly a lot of oak leaves (which are hard to break down) that have been mulched up and left behind.   I don't love this look, but I wanted to try it.  Here - below - is a...