Sandy Dyer rakes leaves Thursday morning onto her garden bed at her home in New Gloucester. Dyer is a hybrid raker, raking some leaves in her yard where they’ve piled up, but letting others naturally mulch. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

To rake or not to rake? This is the question. 

The answer? Well, that part is not so easy. 

As fall winds down toward winter and the gaunt trees have been denuded of their leaves, we have found that there are three types of people. There are those who rake, those who do not rake and then a whole bunch of people in between. 

In the first group are those who believe — and strongly — that raking up the leaves in the fall is not only unnecessary, it may be harmful to yard health. 

“Leaving the leaves on the lawn seems like a pretty easy way — even easier than the alternative — to promote biodiversity on a small scale,” says Paula Levesque of Wales. “If people want the blisters and the bags, have at it, but if a beautiful lawn is what they are looking for, not raking is the way to get it. It’s known that leaf litter improves topsoil and allows the pollinators to overwinter. Earthworms eat the leaves as well. The earth should not be manicured, it should be managed. Humans are a very self-centered group. The crawly things take care of us, and we should take care of them. I do not rake, leaves are gone within the first couple mows of the spring!” 

For every response like that one, we got at least one from the other side; the side of lifelong rake enthusiasts who just aren’t having it. Dead leaves left out in the yard all winter? Unacceptable. 

“You just leave yourself a huge, wet mess to clean up in spring,” says Jenny Boivin of Jay. 

“If I leave the leaves,” says Paula Masselli, “all I have is mud everywhere in the spring.” 

Bobbi Nichols of Auburn, tried to go the “no rake” route and it didn’t go well for her. Now she’s back to the old ways. 

“I bagged nine 55-gallon drum liners with leaves last week and I’m probably gonna bag another 10 easily this week before the snow flies,” she says. “Last spring was a heavy wet mess and I’m not going to let areas build again.” 

Meanwhile, there are those who reject both hard-line raking philosophies in favor of a sort of compromise. These folks don’t rake at all, but they mulch their leaves. Or they rake, but only a little bit. 

“I don’t rake anything till the leaves are off,” says Sandy Dyer of New Gloucester. “Then I only rake where it is really piled up. Those I take back into the woods. Otherwise I leave them and they get mowed/mulched in the spring. I’d like to say that is because it is all because of the critters in the leaves, but 75% of it is that I am too lazy to rake much. I rake where I think the leaves would blow onto my closest neighbor’s space.” 

Many residents, like this one in Lewiston, choose not to rake their leaves in the fall. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Lida Iles of Bethel and her husband have come up with a similar system. 

“We have a very old maple tree in our front yard that drops a LOT of leaves, but they mat down if we leave them,” Iles says. “About five years ago we decided to mow them without bagging them. We mow over and over and round and round until they are in small bits, then aim the mower so they blow out all around. If there are too many in one spot we sort of sweep them around lightly with the rake. The results have been remarkable! What was once a dirt ‘lawn’ is now healthy, green grass, with fewer weeds because the weed seeds cannot find any dirt to grow in — the small bits of mowed leaves fill up all the bare spaces. I’m sure the neighbors think we are crazy to mow in circles over and over but, hey. It works. And it’s a lot easier than raking and hauling away leaves in huge piles. Good for the pollinators, too.” 

Cynthia Marquis Parent of Poland falls somewhere in the middle of the rake vs. no rake debate, as well. She’ll rake here, she’ll rake there and then leave the rest alone. 

“There are places you should leave the leaves and places you shouldn’t,” Parent says. “They can become slippery and cause falls, that’s probably how the season was named fall instead of autumn. They are nice environments for unwanted insects like ticks, fleas, spiders. So if you have pets you want to avoid them attaching to you or your pets. So we clean up our areas.They can become a fire hazard. And for some it just gets messy if you have a lot of them. I understand leaves are great for soil needs. Just depends on the person. I don’t rake all of my two tiny acres, but I do certain spots in my yard.” 

Mickey Meader of Whitefield? He’s got a system, too. 

“All the leaves that I can rake up will go in the garden — it’s a small garden — nothing goes to the curb,”  Meader says. “Game plan is to put a small layer of wood chips on top to keep them in place and that will add to the soil.” 

Many of the people who don’t rake skip the chore specifically because they want to maintain a natural ecosystem in their yards. They LIKE the critters that thrive in those drifts of dead leaves and some say their lawns the following summer are healthier because of it. 

“I stopped raking mine and had fireflies downtown,” says Joanne Kingsley Thomas of Lewiston.  

For Jessica Proctor, changing the way she approached autumn leaves was a matter of survival for her Lewiston yard. 

“People clearcut the lot next to us, so in the past 13 years, my yard living on a hill has lost so much nutrients,” she says. “I let my lawn go natural in some spots to help with runoff along with some of my leaves. I’ll mulch after spring when temps get warmer. I have lots of native milkweed for the pollinators along with bee balm and other plant. You should see the milkweed at night. It comes alive.” 

Sandy Dyer rakes leaves Thursday morning onto her garden at her home in New Gloucester. Dyer says she concentrates her raking on areas where leaves could blow into her closest neighbor’s yard. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Claire Courtemanche of Sabattus mulches her leaves and then lets them stay put, which she says is good for both her lawn and her garden. 

BOTH PROS AND CONS

Clearly there are plenty of reasons to skip raking and yet for some, such a radical departure from the autumn tradition of filling bags with leaves and hauling them to the curb spells nothing but catastrophe. 

Gary Jones rakes his Auburn yard year after year, and if he happens to miss a spot or two, those spots “are always a soggy, gross mess for weeks and has the worst grass growth.” 

And here we introduce Rebecca Long, coordinator of Horticulture Training Programs with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, who is pretty clear about one thing: When it comes to the matter of raking leaves, there is no one right away. What works for one person might not work for his neighbor. 

Long wrote a piece titled “To Rake or not to Rake?” for the Cooperative Extension website. In the article, she tells the story of finding numerous woolly bear caterpillars sheltering in the leaves Long had just raked up. Clearly, the caterpillars had been using the leaves to ride out winter, and here Long was disturbing those plans. 

“It made me think,” Long writes, “about the number of insects that get raked up each fall and sent to the local transfer station in bags – insects that could have been next season’s pollinators, food for our native birds, and part of our local ecosystem. 

“Consider a natural forest ecosystem,” Long explains. “Leaves fall, decay where they land, and return organic matter and nutrients to the soil, benefiting the trees they fell from. Lots of other things benefit as well; leaves provide nesting materials for birds and squirrels, hiding places for mice and salamanders, and protection for seeds until they can germinate. Fallen leaves also provide food and shelter for essential microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and tiny invertebrates who drive the cycle of breakdown and decay, returning nutrients to the soil.” 

For those specifically leaving the rake in the garage because they want to create a pollinator-friendly habitat, there will be plenty of payoff for leaving the leaves where the lay. 

“Many bees and wasps build their nests in the ground, and our solitary native bees rely on leaf litter for insulation to hibernate over the winter,” Long writes. “Leaving the leaves can also build the climate resilience of your yard. Leaf litter protects your soil, helping it retain moisture during dry times and providing protection during torrential storms, allowing that rain to gently soak in without eroding topsoil.” 

Good stuff. And if it was ALL good stuff, we probably wouldn’t have much to talk about here. 

But those in the know are quick to point out that there are downsides to leaving yards cluttered with fallen leaves. Among those downsides? Vermin! Pestilence!  

Why leave the leaves? They provide shelter and protection for small animals and insects through the winter and return nutrients back into the soil. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

Millie Marie Pelletier, who lives in South Portland, points out that heaps of dead leaves provide a hiding space for rats, for one thing. And that’s not to mention the ticks and mosquitoes that will be drawn to the yard come spring. 

No rake? Pelletier isn’t the biggest fan of the movement. 

“I think this trend has gone a bit too far in some cases,” she says. 

She’ll get no argument from Long. In her article detailing the pros and cons of the “no rake” movement, she doesn’t omit the negatives. 

“A layer of leaves, so thick you can’t see your lawn, can potentially smother grass,” she writes. “And removing leaves dropped by trees experiencing significant foliar fungal disease issues is important to remove the spores that could inoculate and infect next year’s leaves. The aesthetic preference for a clean lawn, either your own or your neighbors’ (especially if you live in an HOA community), may also dictate your fall cleanup.” 

The matter of ticks Long describes as a conundrum. 

“The practices that benefit insects we’ve deemed ‘good’ also benefit other arthropods that can impact human health, like ticks,” Long writes. “Studies have found that areas rich with fallen leaves can create good habitat for the survival of immature ticks. The study found this to be particularly true on properties where people simply moved leaves to the edges of the property, letting them accumulate in the area where lawn and forest meet.” 

One option to decrease the chances of tick encounters, Long says, is to remove leaves from high-traffic areas, but let them remain in perennial beds and under trees and shrubs. 

“Another option for your lawn: mulch leaves by mowing over them and then leave them in place to speed their breakdown,” Long writes. “This will reduce the suitable habitat for ticks — and pollinators — but will retain the benefit of building up your soil’s organic matter. This is also a great motivation to start strategically decreasing the amount of lawn to just the areas you use for enjoyment and recreation.” 

Read more about the matter of landscape management at the UMaine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab at extension.umaine.edu/ticks/management/landscape-management.

Leaves pile on the sidewalks of Court Street in Farmington as the last of the fall foliage clings to the branches in late October. Rakers say leaving the leaves can harbor insects you don’t want to encounter, such as ticks, and can make cleanup in their yards harder the following year. Leo Goddard/Franklin Journal

In this less-than-perfect poll of our readers, there seemed to be more people willing to try the “no rake” method than there were those adamantly opposed to the idea. But old habits are hard to break. There are plenty of folks who would be no more more willing to leave the leaves in their yards than they would to leave heaps of snow in their driveways after a storm. 

Fortunately, there’s no one out here telling us what to do. Want your lawn to look like a freshly manicured golf course? Rake them all up, boys, and haul ’em to the curb. 

Want to create an ecological hotspot out there and see what develops? Skip the raking, friend, and wait for the fireflies, monarchs and other grateful critters to appear. 

“Bottom line,” writes Long. “A more laid-back approach to fall cleanup can benefit your soil, build climate resilience, and create habitat for pollinators and wildlife. But this might not be the right choice for every person or every situation. It is up to each individual to decide, based on their specific circumstances and priorities.”