To Leave or Not Leave the Leaves This Fall

In this episode, Natascha Batchelor from Hartney Greymont, a Davey company, in Cape Cod, shares advice on what homeowners should do with their leaves when they begin to fall on their landscapes.   
 
In this episode we cover:  

• What should you do with leaves on your landscape? (1:30) (2:49) (15:24)
• What do leaves become when they are broken down? (4:03)
• What leaves are easy and difficult to deal with? (6:20)
• What leaves should you get rid of on your property? (6:54)
• Natascha's favorite trees for fall color (8:12)
• How Natascha educates clients about issues facing their landscapes (9:45)
• What is a resistograph? (11:00)
• How Natascha got into this field (12:40)
• How Natascha builds relationships with clients (12:58)
• Natascha's opinion on planting memorial trees (14:12)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about how you can manage fallen leaves on your property, read our blogs, The Best Way To Clean Up Leaves (Even In A Large Yard), Managing Fallen Leaves In Your Yard and Compost Shredded, Dry Leaves To Get These Leaf Compost Benefits

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.

I'm welcoming back Natascha Batchelor to the show. She's a sales arborist in the Cape Cod office of Hartney-Greymont, which is a Davey company. Natascha is going to tell me why I don't have to rake up all these oak leaves that are starting to fall. How are you doing, Natascha?

Natascha Batchelor: I'm doing pretty good. How about you?

Doug: I'm doing great, except I walked out onto my patio the other day, and there they were. They started to fall down. The worst time of the year for me is fall when this oak forest drops its leaves.

Natascha: I like fall a lot. I've always enjoyed the sound of my feet ruffling through the leaves. For me, it's a great time of year.

Doug: I don't like the sound of the leaf blower on my back.

Natascha: Yes, that's true. That's true.

Doug: We know that leaves are a good thing if they're left in the forest. That's how trees keep doing their thing, right?

Natascha: Exactly. We fix that by taking them away. We're doing something better than nature's figured out.

Doug: Right. Let's talk a little bit about what we should do with those leaves. In my situation, I leave them everywhere I can, but the driveway and the walks, and the patio, that has to be cleared just for safety's sake to get up and down the driveway. Out in the landscape, what should we be doing?

Natascha: There's a couple of different areas of our yards, typically. Areas that have turf, we don't want to leave the leaves unshredded on those. The options are to either remove them from the lawn completely or to shred them with our mowers as we're mowing.

That'll reduce some of the leaf cleanup. Then areas where there's shrubs or trees or beds that we don't have turf in, we can leave the leaves there. They'll help add to the soil moisture and they'll provide wildlife habitat.

Doug: In the case of the turf, is there a point where it could be too thick after that run of the mower over there? Or in general, they're going to break down, and are we going to be okay?

Natascha: Yes, it could be too thick. I think for your situation and probably mine as well, I have a lot of oak trees. You'll start to see that it gets a little thick. At that point, it's probably time to start taking them away. The rule of thumb is 10% to 20%.

Doug: We'll take that situation with the turf area there. Should I blow off some first or just shred and then see what it looks like and blow them off when they're little? How would you approach that?

Natascha: The easiest thing is, as we're at this time of year where there's some leaves falling, they haven't done the major dump, then you can mulch them while mowing and just let them be. Around here, it's Thanksgiving, and starts to get thick. At that point, you're probably going to want to bag them if you're using a blower. If you don't have a mulching mower, then you can always rake them off into the area where there are shrubs.

Doug: That's a good idea. I'm lucky enough where I've got enough property where when I am blowing, I can blow them off to the side off the hillside. Somebody's been doing that since 1939. That becomes an area where I can harvest some of that stuff as compost because it's been there for so many years underneath. Talk a little bit about the benefit of what these leaves become when they break down.

Natascha: Yes. If you have a smaller property and you can't do what you do, you can create an area where you have a compost bin, so to say, and pile the leaves there. If you want them to break down quickly, you can turn them, add green material like grass clippings or food products, mulch them, layer them, and turn them once a month.

You should have something somewhat usable by spring. If you're not turning and you're using whole leaves, it'll be about a year. That's going to provide nutrients. It's going to provide soil structure. That organic matter from the leaves breaking down creates a sticky compound that makes the soil particles stick together a little bit better and add pore space. It's fantastic for your soils, for your plants.

Doug: Even though I hate moving the leaves around, having them next to the compost pile for me is great. I shred them, and every time I'm putting in something from the kitchen or garden, I'm also putting a layer of leaves in between. I'm making like a compost lasagna.

Natascha: Perfect. Exactly.

Doug: There's no reason to worry about leaves that are out in the forest, right? They're there for a reason.

Natascha: Exactly. Yes, Mother Nature seems to know what she's doing.

Doug: Yes, definitely. What was your season like up there?

Natascha: Oh, it was pretty good. We had a wet spring and then a decent summer, but we did get into a little bit of a drought towards the end of the year here. Fortunately, we had some rain come in last week that broke that up. It was pretty good. Trees were very happy with the spring rains.

Doug: We had a pretty similar season but a very extended drought, which just broke here a couple of days ago. There's nothing worse when you're dealing with plants, in my opinion, than a drought. The dry period can cause lots of problems for trees, right?

Natascha: Yes, it challenges the tree's ability to thrive and survive. It can take time for those damaged roots from the drying to show up on a plant. You need to be conscious of what's going on from season to season.

Doug: Back to the leaves. I think oak leaves are the hardest to deal with because they're so big and hard to break down. There's other trees where they're light and easy to move. I wish I had a few more maples.

Natascha: Yes, the maples are great. Those leaves are fantastic. Then locust leaves are fantastic as well because they seem to just dissipate into the lawn all on their own. The biggest thing that we need to be cautious about, though, or say we have an apple tree that's prone to leaf disease, those leaves we don't want to compost and mulch. Those we want to get rid of.

Doug: In the case of my defoliated crab apple, get those leaves out of there because is that perpetuating that fungal disease?

Natascha: It is, yes. Those are the ones that you want to rake up, bag, and get rid of off the property. When we're leaving the leaves, we're also creating habitat for a lot of insects that are overwinter in the leaf litter. This past winter, this was the first time that I left some of the leaves in particular areas that I've cleaned up in the past.

The spring when I was trying to open it up a little bit to let some of those perennials breathe, just the coolest creatures, lots and lots of salamanders, tons of little beetles, and just amazing what a little microbiome we create by leaving those leaves for them to shelter under.

Doug: It's interesting because for many years back in the day, experts told us to remove all those leaves, clean up those perennial beds, but now it's the reverse, to try and help all those creatures, everything down to microbes all the way up to, like you said, salamanders and even bigger.

It is quite enlightening in the spring to see everything that's underneath there. Pollinators too. Leave all that stuff up. That's a good thing for gardeners to do. Now, I want to pick your brain a little bit about fall foliage. What are some of your favorite trees for good color at the end of the season? When did they start turning up there?

Natascha: A lot of stuff has started turning for us. It's a little early this year. I think it was related to the drought at the end of the season. My favorites around here are the red maples and the tupelos, the black gums. It's got a lot of different common names, but those are-- We have a lot of wetlands on the Cape. We have a lot of those around our ponds and streams and kettle holes. Right now, it's just fantastic.

Doug: Arborists are always bringing up that black tupelo because of that fire engine red color that those leaves present. I need to get one of those into my forest. I talk about this all the time. As my oak forest declines, and it is in decline, the team from Davey's coming over here in a couple of weeks, I've got two big oaks that are over the driveway that they've got to go.

The interesting thing is, Natascha, when I call my arborist-- I shouldn't call him my arborist. When I call the arborist that I work with, I was just calling him for one tree. When he came up, he's like, "You know you've got one right behind it that's dead too?" I said, "I did not know that."

He goes, "You know you've got one over here where you're going to put that carport in? That one's going too." I'm like, "Oh, boy. Okay." Talk a little bit about that, about when you go on a property, how it's not just what the client wants specifically, but then it's looking around and finding all sorts of other stuff, too.

Natascha: Yes. I always tell, especially new prospects, I'm like, people either love me or they hate me by the time I'm walking around their property because they called me for one thing and I'm noticing all kinds of other things.

I don't think we can help ourselves. We have a duty of care anyway. We're required to, if we see something, we have to point it out to them. Most of the time, we're so busy looking around at trees because most of us, we just love them so much that we can't help noticing if there's something else going on. That's our job, is to educate people about what they've got, what the characteristics are, and things they need to be aware of.

Doug: In a way, as the client, it's like, "Oh, he found another tree." Also, it's like, "Whoo, he found another tree." I don't want to be driving down the driveway and realize I can't get out. It's just nice to have somebody looking.

The other thing on my property-- This is a continual thing. It's four acres of oak trees and other hardwoods. I saw some mushrooms growing up in part of a tree. This is part of a tree where a big branch fell off and ruined my garden shed.

I was worried. He said, "I'm just going to bring this tool called a resistograph to look at that." What does that mean? What is that going to do when he goes up and looks at that part of the tree with a resistograph? What does it look like? What is the tool?

Natascha: The tool looks like a big rectangular box. What it has is a very, very fine, small drill bit in it. As that drill bit is drilling into the tree, it does exactly what it says. It's testing the resistance of the wood. As the wood is more solid, it shows one type of graph. Then as it becomes softer, it shows a different graph. They can tell where the decay starts in the particular area that they're drilling.

Doug: Good, because I put a new shed there and I do not want that tree to fall on it.

Natascha: They should be able to get a pretty good picture of what's going on for you.

Doug: We've talked about it before, but remind me a little bit about how you got into this and why the job's right for you.

Natascha: Yes. I went to school for engineering and realized that wasn't what I wanted to do. I stumbled into an arboriculture class, and it was just absolutely everything I wanted. It was trees and people. That's pretty much what arboriculture is.

It's our outdoor environment and having people live in with them and cohabitate with them. It's just 27 years ago, I started with Davey and I have not looked back. It's been a great career. Arboriculture is one of the best professions on the planet as far as I'm concerned.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about that relationship you have with your clients. Just like I have with, I keep calling them my arborist, but we've been working together for a decade on this property. I'm just so relieved to have somebody that I can trust to find these things for me.

Natascha: I think that that's what it is. One of the things that was brought up when we're trying to learn and be better arborists is it's not about the trees, which is hard for us to understand because we learn about arboriculture and trees, but it's really about the people and the relationship with their trees.

When we're going to a property, we're meeting the person and finding out what their relationship is with the plants on their property and what they want out of that environment, and how we can help them with that. I think that that's one of the funnest things.

This can be something as simple as this tree was planted when my daughter was born or my son was born, or it can be something like a memorial tree for someone. Or my father planted that in the 1960s, and look at it now. We have a really intense relationship with plants.

Doug: Let's talk about memorial trees and special trees to plant for people. I try to dissuade people from doing that unless it's a tough tree and they have the right spot for it, just because I would hate for that tree not to make it. When people ask you for that sort of advice, do you tell them a certain tree that might be best or how do you go about it?

Natascha: I think it's an understanding that plants are living things, and it's possible that plant won't make it, but what do they want to see and how long do they want it to last? If they want it to be a legacy tree, we're going to look into a shade tree because those tend to be the ones that last longer.

I've had people plant smaller trees because that's the space they have. Usually, dogwood, acousa dogwood, is going to be pretty reliable. They can last a long time if they're treated properly.

Doug: I chose an American hornbeam, again because I'm trying to diversify what's growing in that forest. I love hornbeams and I think they're pretty tough. Tough natives.

Natascha: Yes, they are. They're great.

Doug: Natascha, before I let you go, sum it up for us. What should we do with those leaves?

Natascha: We should leave the leaves unless it's on the lawn or they're diseased, and we should use the free fertilizer and mulch that nature's giving us.

Doug: I like that advice. That's less work for me as the leaves come down. Natascha, as always, thanks for your time. Good stuff.

Natascha: It was great talking to you.

Doug: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host Doug Oster. Do me a big favor, subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment, there's two ways to reach us. Send us an email at podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S at D-A-V-E-Y dot com.

You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your ideas might be on a future podcast. We'd love to hear from you. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

[00:16:38] [END OF AUDIO]