I mulch mow my leaves into the lawn. I sometimes get bags from neighbors and mulch mow them into my lawn as well.

Removing those leaves from your lawn also removes the nutrients they contain that the trees have pulled from your soil, so by removing the leaves you alos remove nutrients that you need to replace. I have mulch mowed as much as 6 inches of leaves back into the soil and have found that before the snow flies the earthworms and other soil workers will have moved those now shredded leaves into the soil. As long as you do not put enough leaves on the soil to totally cover the grass there should be no problem with how much you mulch mow.

This is going to be my first year mulching them all. I've tried in the past but it looked so bad and I didn't think there was any way they were all going to get composted.

Another problem is that that time of year especially with the leaves sitting on the ground things stay so wet. It's almost like you have to mow them every day to keep up and prevent them from compacting into the grass where the mower won't pick them up.

Definantly mulch. I have a big yard with a big live oak tree on one side of it. On the other side there used to be a big hackberry, but it blew over in a storm 3 years ago. Every year since, the grass beneath the oak tree stays green longer in fall and greens up faster in spring. Live oak leaves rot slowly, but they do rot. I used to think that sunlight played more of a factor in turf quality, but my big oak tree tells me sunlight is not most important. I think the soil beneath the big oak is healthier due to all of the leaves that have been mulched into it over the years.

Concerning my Augustine i have read to mulch and to rake you just don't know what to do but certainly the wet leaves cannot be good for the lawn I would't think?? But i am having so much problems who knows!

When any lawn is fertilized with synthetic fertilizers the soil bacteria soon run out of a food source and go dormant so in those lawns mulch mowing is bad because there is nothign in the soil to digest the clippings. But in a properly cared for lawn, where everything is done to encourage the Soil Food Web to be active those clippings will be digested pretty quickly.
In my lawn, where no synthetic fertilizers have been used in some 40 years, there are no clippings left when I go out to mow every week, they get digested very quickly.

Hmmm. Don't think it's working. There's just too much leaves to mulch into clippings. Do you folks spread it around the yard? The leaves usually fall under the tree.

As I previously stated I have mulch mowed 6 inches of leaves into my soil with no problem. That does take some time to do and once or even twice over with the mower may not do it, but after mulch mowing that amount of leaves into the soil the grass grew greener, thicker, faster the following spring then any time before.

Hmm.. May be your mower is better? I had previously sharpen the blade on the mower, too. I guess I'll try again and may be set the blade lower.

Paul

kimmsr said,"When any lawn is fertilized with synthetic fertilizers the soil bacteria soon run out of a food source and go dormant so in those lawns mulch mowing is bad because there is nothign in the soil to digest the clippings. But in a properly cared for lawn, where everything is done to encourage the Soil Food Web to be active those clippings will be digested pretty quickly.
In my lawn, where no synthetic fertilizers have been used in some 40 years, there are no clippings left when I go out to mow every week, they get digested very quickly."

Maybe you should offer some documentation to support such a closed minded generalization. You can use synthetic fertilizers, mulch the clippings and then the leaves in the fall the soil bacteria will process things just fine . I have a friend who cuts 45 lawns a week , uses 100% synthetic ferts and mulches exclusively, things work out just fine.

Last night during the news Scotts had an ad on that said, "Break your rake" and told people mulch mow the leaves from their trees back into the soil those leaves came from. Of course the ad also advised spreading some of the Scott's product, totally unnecessary, after mulch mowing those leaves.
brandyanna, there is a lot of support for what I posted available so there is no need for me to post, on an organic forum, support for organic concepts.