Driving to and from work this week, I couldn’t help but notice that there are some leaves starting to fall due to the hot weather we have been having. Not only is it hot, but it is dry too. When we had the high humidity, we would get those pop up thunder storms in the afternoon that would give us some water, but now the humidity is gone and the UV rays from the searing afternoon sun are baking the leaves of the trees and shrubs. I even noticed some burning bushes that were starting to get a reddish hue on the leaves already. This is slightly early for this to occur but I doubt it means that winter will come early this year. But soon enough the leaves will be turning.

Autumn leaf color is a phenomenon that affects the nor- mally green leaves of many deciduous trees and shrubs by which they take on, during a few weeks in the autumn season, various shades of red, yellow, purple, and orange. Everyone is familiar with the vibrant reds of the aforementioned, burning bush as many have them planted in the landscape, but blueberries have just as scarlet of leaf that will give you weeks of color this time of year.

So why are the trees so colorful every fall? Well a green leaf is green because of the presence of a pigment known as chlorophyll, which is inside the leaf. When chlorophyll is abundant in the leaf ’s cells, as they are during the growing season, the chlorophylls’ green color dominates and masks out the colors of any other pigments that may be present in the leaf. Thus the leaves of summer are characteristically green. In late summer, as daylight hours shorten and temperatures cool, the veins that carry fluids into and out of the leaf are gradually closed off as a layer of special cork cells forms at the base of each leaf. As this cork layer de- velops, water and mineral intake into the leaf is reduced, slowly at first, and then more rapidly. It is during this time that the chlorophyll begins to decrease and as the chlorophyll decreases the leaves true color emerges into the burst of color that amazes us every fall.

Deciduous trees turn colors and loose their leaves every
year sending all their remain- ing strength down to the roots for storage over the winter, but even evergreens loose one third of their needles or leaves every fall as well. Evergreens also send strength down to their roots for winter storage. This helps the plants sprout all their new growth in the spring. Even though the leaves are pretty to look at, they do add valuable nutrients back into your soil when you mow and mulch them up.

Every year I see bags upon bags of leaves that people bag up and have carted away. This is ludicrous, why pay someone to take away nutrients from your lawn? At the very least start your own compost pile instead of having them carted away to someone else’s compost pile, or worse yet a landfill. As the days get shorter more leaves will begin to fall, and all you need to do is to mow your lawn a little more often to mulch these leaves up so that they can decompose on your lawn and fertilize at the same time. You need to cut the leaves a little at a time so that the ones you cut last week get cut again this week with the new ones into finer bits. By the end of the season you should have a fine coat of leaves to decay on your lawn over the course of the winter. This might take a little more mowing, but a lot less raking, bagging and dis- posing of what is simply mother nature’s way of invigorating the ground.

So as you see those leaves falling in the days and weeks to come, don’t look at it as more work bagging but instead look at it as free fertilizer falling from the sky.