When to allow nature to take its course and when not?

My tendency in life has been to assume that nature knows what it's doing. So why rake leaves? Leaves make soil eventually. But as I started getting more into gardening and running into peach leaf curl and other pests/diseases, I learned that many recommend raking the leaves up to stop disease and pests from incubating. Yet beneficial insects overwinter in leaves, too.

I only want to do something "unnatural" when it's the best way to prevent a problem. I don't really care about it from a looks perspective. When is it necessary to get rid of leaves and when is it better to let nature take its course?

I get rid of leaves if they came off a plant that had rust, black spot, leaf curl, or some other infection. But if they came from a healthy plant then I either leave them alone, or sometimes if they're big leaves I'll run them through the shredder first but then I'll put the shredded leaves back down. They make great mulch!

I've been told, for instance, that it's very important to leave avocado leaves on the ground. However, leaving them on the ground has meant more hiding places for slugs that hit my strawberries. I wish I had a shredder/chipper. I'd definitely shred them and lay them down again.

I'm so glad someone brought this up. We tend to also leave healthy leaves where they are, figuring they'll just help in the long run. Recently, I had read things that said you have to rake all of it up and get rid of it. Good to know I'm not causing any harm by doing this!

I used to let leaves fall and stay on my yard- until I was told that the oak leaves in my yard were doing more harm than good. Now I have to adjust the pH in my WHOLE YARD so grass will grow. Oak leaves are acidic- grass likes neutral to alkaline. When I mulched the leaves and put them on my flower beds- oh boy! You should see my hydrangeas!

Leaves are also great for winter protection in a wire cage around some plants, like rose bushes.

Yet it looks like I should have cleared the leaves and grasses underneath a hedge that has thrips.

I ARE CONFUSED!

we have a couple of mature sugar maples and just let the bulk of the leaves be where they fall. (The rest are raked and moved to the back yard and piled for the winter) The wind blows those that remain on the lawn over onto my rock garden, and there's enough stems to hold the bulk of them over the winter. The snow drifts in that area too, so there's good protection.

In the spring, I pull off the bulk of the leaves and they go to the compost pile.

The leaf/snow protection enables me to keep my cactus garden overwintered!

Of course it depends on your value system. Is the life cycle of thrips more sacred to you than the number and quality of buds in your hedge? Is the peach leaf curl bug your pride & joy, or do you want to commit the highly unnatural act of harvesting a large healthy crop of peaches? It's not sixties hippie flower power behavior, but I'd suggest that you consider how each section of your garden gives you joy, and then do whatever work is necessary (mow or not mow, rake or heap up, spray (ack!) or feed, water or drain) in order to promote that aspect of nature. No garden is 100% natural -- even in the Bible, Adam & Eve were put into the Garden of Eden to tend it.

If your property is big enough, you can set aside a wild area that you allow to develop itself without any interference from you.

Leaves in the yard get mowed all summer, but when the majority fall, I rake and shread.

DW knows how much I love tools, so bought me a 5hp shreader/bagger a few years ago. I pile up all treelimbs until about 6' x 20', the spend half a day shreading the lot. Use filling dog dug holes, low spots in the yard, and as mulch in the flower and hedge beds. All excess is piled and self composts in a few weeks.

Use the compost to help control soil moisture in the veg. garden.

> It's not sixties hippie flower power behavior, but I'd suggest that you consider how each section of your garden gives you joy, and then do whatever work is necessary (mow or not mow, rake or heap up, spray (ack!) or feed, water or drain) in order to promote that aspect of nature.

I'm not suggesting doing nothing. I've certainly learned that things need pruning, deadheading, etc. However, sometimes there are conflicting directions. Like some leaves are supposed to be raked up and others (avocado) left down. I don't know all the ins and outs yet of what intervention is recommended where.

The best way to have a natural trouble-free garden is to avoid any plants which are know to be vulnerable to all kinds of diseases, like peach trees, cultivated roses etc...and to respect the natural growing habitat and type of soil of a plant.

I hate that word "supposed". Do what will promote your goal. If that means that the maple and oak leaves stay put and the avocado leaves are raked up, then do it. It's your garden, you make the rules. It means more research (why should avo leaves stay down? what happens when they're raked up? are there better alternatives? what do you do with them if you do rake them up?), but following other people's rules only results in other people's gardens, not your own.

My recently planted rose bush 'Applejack' wasn't supposed to produce any flowers this year, but it's got the prettiest little rosebud on it today that will open up this weekend. I'm certainly not going to prune it off!

> It means more research

I guess I'm pretty bad at expressing myself. I was hoping that asking here in the Beginner Gardening Questions forum would yield some answers. But I guess I haven't give enough of a clue to what I have planted and how so that anyone would know what would be pertinent info...

Really the only time you HAVE to remove the leaves is if they had some sort of fungal disease or something along those lines which you don't want sticking around to reinfest the plant. Otherwise, you can rake them up or leave them there, whatever you prefer. I don't think there are any situations where you have to leave the leaves there, I had an avocado tree at my old house and I picked the leaves up around it and it was perfectly happy with that. I'm sure it would have also been perfectly happy if I'd left the leaves there.

If you want to shred leaves and don't have a shredder or chipper, put some leaves into the bottom of an empty trash can and use your string trimmer to chop them up. Then it's easy to compost them or spread them back out.
In my yard, we use a mulching mower and leave leaves where they fall. A blower will move them out of garden beds and into the yard in the spring. I leave them in the beds over the winter for insulation.
I agree with the leave them alone unless they look diseased theory. Apple trees or relatives with blight should be cleaned up and burned as the fungus will overwinter in the soil. Canna leaves infected with leaf rollers should also be cleaned up and burned as the caterpillars will overwinter as well. Also the same with roses and blackspot.
I didn't read this whole thread, so sorry if I repeated any info!
Bev