(ARA) – As Mother Nature adorns the trees in your yard with riotous reds, vibrant yellows and exotic oranges, you can easily get swept up in the romance of the season – until those leaves turn brown, drop from the branches and litter your lawn. Then you start to think of the hours of backbreaking raking work ahead of you.

This autumn, why not try working with Mother Nature by mulching those leaves instead of raking, bagging and condemning them to a landfill?

Leaf mulching is a time-saving, environmentally friendly way to deal with fallen leaves. Plus, if you live in a community that has cut back on collection services due to the economy, mulching can solve your dilemma of what to do with the leaves littering your lawn.

“It doesn’t make sense to rake leaves and bag them, just to have them end up decomposing in a landfill,” says Dr. Phil Dwyer, senior scientist at The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. “Leaf mulching recycles a natural resource and enriches the soil of your lawn for free.”

In fact, turf benefits by receiving more nutrients when you mulch fall leaves back into the lawn instead of raking them, according to a study by Michigan State University turfgrass researcher Thom Nikolai and ScottsMiracle-Gro scientists. Recycling fallen leaves saves time and money, adds nutrients to the soil, speeds spring greening and reduces weeds.

Here’s how to recycle this fall’s crop of fallen leaves:

* Remove the grass catcher from your lawn mower. Mow over the leaves on your lawn. Repeat until they are reduced to dime-sized pieces.

* Mow until you see about half an inch of grass through the mulched leaf layer.

Any kind of rotary-action mower will do the job, and all kinds of leaves can be mulched. Throughout the season, you can chop up to 18 inches total of leaf clutter with several passes of the mower. Having a somewhat thick layer of mulched leaves is okay as long as you can still see the green grass blades poking through. As leaf bits settle into the ground, microbes and worms get to work recycling them.

Once you’ve enriched your soil with leaf mulching, don’t forget that fall is the best time to feed and seed your lawn. A few simple steps can help ensure that your lawn will be strong next season and beyond:

* After mulching, feed your lawn with Scotts Turf Builder WinterGuard fall lawn fertilizer to help build strong, deep roots for a better foundation and a more robust lawn next year. The nitrogen in the fertilizer will also help the mulched leaves decompose faster. Be sure to sweep excess fertilizer off hard surfaces like driveways and sidewalks.

* After feeding, spread seed where needed. To reseed your bare spots, dig up bare areas, mix in compost, sow your seeds and cover with more compost. If the weather is dry, keep the seeded soil moist until new grass begins to grow. Seeding autumn bare spots will thicken the lawn and make it more resistant to future bare spots.

To learn more about leaf mulching and autumn lawn care, visit www.scotts.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

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These two work together to give your lawn everything it needs from you. The rest it gets for itself. Even these, of course, may be supplied in other forms or from other sources, depending on the soil and climate.

One of the most common difficulties in proper lawn care is how much and when to apply either of these. To overcome those problems, though, is relatively simple.

Scotts and other commercial fertilizer makers have special preparations, with directions that show you how and when to apply the contents. Following the directions is about the simplest method for application.

Take care, though, to factor in specifics about your circumstances. Be sure to check the weather forecast for the upcoming 48 hours after the day you plan to apply. Some mixtures work best if they’ve been leached into the soil by a couple of hours of light rain or 15 minutes of sprinkler watering. Others will be washed away or diluted by that.

Applying the Spring fertilizer is best done as early as possible in the season. Clearly, if you live in an area where snow is still on the ground in May, you can’t properly apply the compound with a spreader. But getting it down as early as possible has several benefits.

New seeds laid down the previous Fall will be starting to germinate. Giving them that additional assistance early will help them gain the most advantage over competing plants like crabgrass or weeds. Feeding early also helps when the mixture contains (as it frequently does) compounds which help fight lawn insects.

Japanese Beetle grubs and other insects destroy lawns. Most of them do this by feeding on the roots as the young shoots are sprouting when the insects are still in the larvae stage. Once they’ve begun that process, if not stopped right away, your lawn in that area is dead for at least that year.

Rarely will you be successful even replanting the same year, since the damage doesn’t usually show up until later in the Spring or early Summer. By that time, the infestation is advanced. Sometimes it will take two or three years for the lawn to fully recover. Head the problem off by laying down grub-killing fertilizer before you even know you have a problem. These are sometimes called pre-emergent herbicides.

Fertilizers can be overdone, though, so exercise caution. Applying them too frequently or during hot weather can burn your lawn. Most contain the proper amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements to help Spring blooming grass. But in areas where the soil is already amply supplied, the grass gets too much. Like any living thing, getting too much of an element is often as bad as getting too little.

Be sure to measure and factor in pH – the degree of acidity or alkalinity of your lawn. Lawns like a neutral pH, like that of water. Too acid and you’ll have moss and other grass-crowding growth. Too alkaline and salts get concentrated and water absorption altered.

Keep to a regular fertilizing schedule with an adjustable spreader and your lawn will be green and weeds and insects will be minimized.

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