"Good sanitation" vs. "Let it rot"

[sweet thunder]

I'm curious about where you draw the line.

Some garden advice indicates we should rake up all debris to keep things tidy and so that pests and disease have fewer hiding/breeding places, but Mother Nature doesn't rake. Letting leaves fall and compost in place makes sense to me.

I'm walking the line, I guess. In the more out-of-the-way spots I'm leaving things where they fall, but in the high-traffic areas I'm cleaning up. In some spots I'm cleaning up enough to make it look nicer while trying to leave a layer of organic matter on the ground as natural mulch. I guess I could be paying closer attention to the types of plants and potential pests, but I'm not.

As I continue to do my fall chores I'd love to hear what everyone else does.

[Kisal]

I prefer to clean up debris, and compost that which is appropriate. I have a major problem with brown garden snails in my yard, and I can keep the population under control, just by keeping the yard tidy.
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Sunset Zone 6/USDA Zone 7b

[Marlingardener]

We clean up everything and compost it. I'd leave some leaves/debris on the ground, but Texas has two of every bug ever invented, and leaving debris just encourages them.
We do mulch, but with well-composted compost.
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Gardening at Red Gate Farm www.rgf-tx.com

[applestar]

I've often wondered about the incongruity or the "seeming illogic (is that a word?)" of laboriously hauling stuff away for disposal, only to haul back equal or greater volume of "stuff to improve the soil" and "add organic matter" --> Wait! Isn't that what I JUST HAULED AWAY?

You have to give credence to "tried and true" agricultural practices that's been in place for, really, hundreds of years, but at the same time, I wonder about some tasks that seem to represent "work for labor's sake"

I think some of the Permaculture and No-till gardening/agriculture principles address those conundrums. I think, too, that sometimes, the pest/disease experiences maybe based mostly on vast tracts of mono-cultured crop.

However, I can't say I've reached a satisfactory answer.

[opabinia51]

What I have done for the past ten years in my gardens is laboriously raked up all the fallen leaves from the yard (and neighbours yards) and layered them up with manure, coffee grounds and grass clippings to create a sheet compost and it works great.

It is a complete waste of a finite carbon source (gas) and money and time and energy to have all that good stuff hauled away.

The benefits of doing this work are evident in my garden starting with the soil, it used to be sandy soil with little organic matter and now... well, now it is beautiful soil with lovely tilth, a healthy fungal, microbial, and macrobial population. It has a high water holding capacity and tonnes of free nutrients that are bound up in various matrices and the plants in my garden are free to secrete bits of acid or base to derive what nutrients they need. My corn each year is 7 feet tall with a minimum of 5 cobs per stalk.

So, that's my take on the whole situation.

KEVIN
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Feed the soil, not the plants.

[thanrose]

I'm more of the let it rot camp. Yeah, in permaculture, you do not remove the prunings or leaf litter or even fallen fruit. You might relocate a little, such as spreading your scythed comfrey under other trees or kicking the few bad apples some distance away.

A monoculture can exist even in a permaculture environment. It's not a good thing. Think of it like crop rotation. Why do we do it? Because a monoculture enables persistent disease more than a variable culture, and depletes the soil in the same way.

I like to think of all the nutrients that our growing plants have sucked up from the soil. If we throw away what has grown on our land, we will have to replenish those minerals and nutrients in some other fashion.

Most of you won't have fallen palm fronds to remove, but mine get dragged to a remote edge where I'll put sycamore and maple limbs, and huge pine cones. It's next to my compost, and creates compost of its own as the woody parts break down. I could eventually use this as a base for hugelkultur, or the layered bed over rotting wood, keeping all that good stuff on my property. While it persists over a couple of years or more, wildlife will use it as shelter, and they in turn enrich my life and add to my soil.

I'm looking at a bed in the front yard now where I want to rake out all the litter and replace with wood chipper mulch. The last time I did that was maybe three years ago, and it is a little overdue.

[rainbowgardener]

It is a really interesting question, not simple. Most garden advice tells you to clear things away because pests can overwinter in it. My personal take on it is that the pests that are specific to that plant tend to stay in the debris of that plant. So I do not leave the plant material there where it falls. Dead iris leaves or peonies or whatever get trimmed and composted. The flower beds (and same for veggies) are cleared of the dead flower material and then mulched with compost, leaves, wood chips are whatever.

Even though I'm adding back organic matter, it's not the specific stuff that (perhaps) had pests in it. But no organic matter leaves my property, it just goes to the compost pile and eventually comes back to the flower bed in that form. It's more work, but looks neater and I think cuts down on pests/ diseases etc.

The only place this isn't true is my native woodland shade garden that I'm trying to turn back into at least a good imitation of a natural / wild environment. There nothing gets moved.

[applestar]

OK. Here's a question to ponder: We all know if you want ladybugs to stay in your garden, you have to let the aphid population reach that critical mass. Now, it's not ONLY the bad bugs that overwinter in the leaf litter, etc. Right?

Oh, another point, from a butterfly enthusiast's view -- some butterflies and desirable moths overwinter as pupa or larva in leaf litter too. Ones that I can think of right now are skippers and sulfurs, as well as Snowberry Clearwing moth, Isabella Tiger moth (wooly bear caterpillars), etc.

[rainbowgardener]

I take your point applestar, but if I'm putting down fall leaves and/or wood chips as mulch can't the ladybugs and butterflies overwinter in that?

I'm just thinking you don't want the litter from one plant to stay by that plant, because the pests that are specific to that plant stay by it then...

[Kisal]

Ladybugs will often overwinter. They used to gather in a huge mass inside a hollow limb on my old tulip tree.
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Sunset Zone 6/USDA Zone 7b

[gixxerific]

I do a little of both. A lot of the time I will just let stuff fall, it turns to mulch eventually. If there is a lot like when pulling spent plants they go to the compost. During the summer if there are bad tomatoes I don't throw them in the compost, sometimes they will lay where they are, a lot of times I just toss them behind my back into the yard.

Nothing gets taken away it just depends on how I feel at the moment where it ends up. But usually at the end of the season I clean up as much as possible (the big stuff like tomato vines) than mulch over everything with grass and leaves and whatnot. Everything else goes into the compost, though I look at my garden beds as a big compost pile too. Probably half in the beds and half in a pile waiting for the beds.

From nature back to nature is how I think. The more I read up on permaculture I believe I have been a permacultarist the whole time at least in certain ways and didn't even know it. More of a Donocultarist. A blend of many different ideals.
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Happy Gardening, Dono Feed The Earth & It Will Feed You!

[a0c8c]

I rake only what I feel like raking, and most of it stays where it fell. There's too many trees for me to rake up every leaf, every blade of grass, etc. I'd rather it stay and slowly break down. I don't have two days I can dedicate just to raking up leaves, making four or five compost piles( or even enough greens to do such) and then months later, dedicating another two days to turn them, and then months later another two days, etc. Besides, the leaves cover the ugly dirt below the trees
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Home Gardener frm Gonzales, Texas; by way of Austin; by way of Iowa.
(I won't be posting as much, internet troubles)

[jal_ut]

Hmmmmm, different strokes for different folks.
I don't clean up, I hook the roto tiller on the tractor
and just till everything in. Standing corn stalks, tomato vines,
squash vines, and everything else gets chopped up and mixed with the soil.

Then I put the leaves on the garden, and clean out the chicken coop and put the manure on the garden, then till it again.

This fall tilling will also disrupt any insect eggs that have been laid in the garden.

By spring the oraganic matter is pretty well decomposed. There will still be some on the surface that is not decomposed, especially corn stalks, but it can be mulch.

In the spring I don't till at all for the early plantings. Just go plant.
Later the weeds will be coming up when its time to plant the warm weather stuff. I take the Troybilt tiller and till just one inch deep to disrupt the weeds and make a seed bed, then plant. The loose soil on top forms what is called a dust mulch, and it prevents the moisture from wicking up and evaporating.

Deep spring tilling causes large moisture losses. I prefer to keep the moisture for the plants to use. I won't get irrigation water until after the plants are all up so that spring moisture is very important. There is no way I can irrigate with the city culinary source. Here in dry Utah we must irrigate to get a crop.

This works for me, but most of you garden on a smaller scale so do what works for you. My little veggie garden is 7500 square feet. That doesn't include the perennial beds nor the orchard. If I didn't have the big tractor to help me with these chores, I would be cutting way back on size.
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Plant a little seed.........
Gardening at 5000 feet elevation, zone 4/5