Sustainable and Pollinator Friendly Fall Cleanup

Leaves are falling, plants are dying, and the urge to do a thorough cleanup before snowfall is almost irresistible. Or maybe you just want to get it over with before spring. Whatever the motivation behind the cleanup, pollinators can be hurt if you’re overachieving with your fall lawn and yard care.

Leave the Leaves

Fall leaves with their many colors are beautiful and breathtaking as long as they are on the trees. They take away your breath in another way once they are a foot deep on your yard. But there is hope for this onerous fall chore that will greatly benefit pollinators. This is one time our little pollinator buddies benefit from us doing less work.

Pollinators use fall leaves and plants as nesting sites. Take leaves, for example: many pollinators lay eggs on leaves before they drop, then they hatch at the right time in the spring. Some create cocoons, other pollinators burrow into piles of leaves, or create nests in the soil under the leaves to shield themselves from the winter. Anyway you rake it, the leaves are much more than another fall chore. They are nurseries, hatcheries, and winter protection necessary for pollinator survival.

Leave Leaves in the Garden 

What should we do with all these leaves? The best thing is to move them off of the lawn, sidewalk, driveway, street, patio, gutters, and anywhere else they may not be desired. You can rake or blow them into native, perennial, and veggie garden beds or into the woods or other areas where they will do some good as a mulch. Rain does its part to help hold the leaves in place. Do not mulch large quantities of leaves with a mower, as this will destroy any pollinators taking shelter. Garden beds can hold amazing amounts of leaves and don’t necessarily need to be removed in the spring. In fact, leaves are one of the best mulches you can find. Leaving them in the garden will promote healthy soil with lots of delicious carbon for those soil microbes. If needed, excess leaves can be moved in the spring, but wait until May to do so. This will give the pollinators time to wake up and get out of the house of leaves that protected them over the winter.

Not enough leaves? Cover your gardens with mulch.

If you don’t have a forest’s worth of leaves, you may want to consider mulching around plants and gardens. Shredded wood mulch is most effective when at least 3 inches thick. You may not be able to do this around small plants and ground covers, but they seem to be ok without the extra layer. A good practice is to plant densely and use ground covers as a living mulch. This constant cover not only suppresses weeds, but it also conserves moisture and creates habitat for overwintering pollinators.

Use cover crops for your veggie gardens.

Another fall task is to seed cover crops in veggie gardens or in areas where you may want to install or seed a garden in the spring. These cover crops will cover the soil (thus the name) and put roots in the ground. This practice is done to support beneficial soil microbes, which in turn create healthy soil that benefits everything that grows in that soil. These cover crops will enable the soil to infiltrate more water, and then it will shade and cover the soil to create a blanket that protects throughout the long winter and even into the next growing season. You can seed or plant directly into this vegetation next spring because these cover crops will die over the winter. This will make a perfect mulch for the seed or the plant starters you begin next spring.

The benefits of dormant seeding.

November is a great time to dormant seed just about anything. Dormant seeding is laying seed down while the ground is too cold for germination. The seed will just snuggle in until the soil warms up next spring. Many native plants need anywhere from 60 to 120 days below freezing before they can germinate. Native seeds know that our killing frosts can come late into May, so they wisely wait until they are sure it’s safe. If you do dormant seeding on bare soil, be sure to use a seed mulch that will hold the seed in place. Straw, mulching straw with a tack agent to get the straw to stick to the soil. There are seeding mulches that do the same thing.

Let Stems Stand.

Another nifty pollinator practice is to burrow into hollow stems of native plants and lay eggs. They will work through the stem, laying eggs with little food stores, and wall it off. They repeat this method of creating little capsules all through the stems of native plants. The larvae will hatch, eat the food packed by Mommy, and burrow their way out of the stem and into the big, wide world. It reminds me a bit of a kindergarten roundup.

This pollinator behavior of high-rise nurseries isn’t limited to the hollow stems of plants. I’ve seen many cocoons on other plants and at the base of grasses. The whole garden is a shelter for insects and other creatures seeking shelter from winter. Just think of the large buzz of insects in your yard and gardens this past summer. All of those insects and more are seeking a place to lay eggs, cocoon, hide, and snuggle up for a long winter’s nap. The least we can do for them is less yardwork!

If you wish to know more about how you can have a more sustainable yard that protects pollinators and our climate, reach out for a home consultation with Bob.