When leaves start piling up, most people’s first instinct is to rake, bag, and haul them off. But one gardener on Reddit suggested a clever gardening hack instead in a post titled “free fall fertilizer.” It shows their viewpoint as they pass a lawnmower over a leaf-covered lawn.
The scoop
Instead of treating autumn leaves as waste, this hack turns them into free, natural fertilizer. Just run your mower over them to mulch them into dust that settles into the soil. As the layer decomposes, it returns organic matter and nutrients, such as nitrogen and carbon, back into the lawn.
Photo Credit: Reddit
Unlike store-bought fertilizers, this method costs nothing, uses what’s already available in your yard, and reduces bags of waste sent to the landfill. If you’re growing your own food or tending garden beds, mulched leaves can also be collected and spread as a free compost material, replacing pricey fertilizers and mulch.
How it’s helping
Instead of hours of raking and buying costly lawn products, this hack creates nutrient-rich fertilizer for free. Homemade fertilizers also make lawns healthier, improving water retention and soil quality over time. If you’re using this technique in a food garden, you have the peace of mind of knowing exactly what’s in your fertilizer. Gardening itself brings big benefits, from saving money on produce to improving mental health and fiber intake.
On the environmental side, mulching leaves keeps organic matter out of landfills, as yard waste accounts for about 12% of municipal solid waste in the United States and generates heat-trapping gases such as methane. Plus, reusing what nature provides reduces demand for mass-produced fertilizers — many of which rely on energy-intensive, chemical-heavy processes.
Many commenters disagreed that this hack is a good idea, depending on the amount of leaves on your lawn and the climate you live in. Luckily, there are other ways to make natural fertilizer if this hack isn’t best for your particular situation.
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What everyone’s saying
The post sparked lively debate.
“This is actually harmful in the long run. … If you only have one or two smaller trees, it’s good because it adds nutrients to the soil and prevents a lot of weeds from growing. But if you have more than a couple of trees … this becomes a problem. What happens is the mulched leaf layer gets too thick and prevents sunlight and oxygen from getting to the roots,” one user wrote. Another person agreed, saying, “I will do a mulching once 90% of the leaves have been raked, and that’s proven to be beneficial for me so far.”
However, others said it worked great for them. “At first my neighbors thought I was crazy,” someone commented. “Then they saw the results and saw I wasn’t spending money on bags. … Now most of my immediate neighbors do the same thing! We all mulch them, and it looks terrific and is a hell of a lot less work!”
Another user summed up the debate: “Mulching is good for some people but really bad for others. Homeowners need to understand their lawn and how many leaves they have before saying mulching is the way.”
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