Raking leaves is good.
Good healthy grass is good.
Clover is a weed. Remove it.
Dandelion is a weed. Remove it.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. All lies.
People rake up all their leaves, put them in bags, and then put them at the end of the street to get picked up. Then they go out to the big box store and buy fertilizer for their grass, because it's dying.
It's stupid, it's not your fault, you were lied to. The grass clippings feed the grass. Leaves feed the grass. The grass clippings are a source of nitrogen, you know exactly like the nitrogen fertilizer you are buying at Walmart. The leaves are a source of carbon. Carbon and nitrogen together will compost and make soil/nutrients for your trees/grass to eat. This is kind of what nature has been doing for a billion years before grass companies pulled clover seeds from grass seed mixes, sold you leaf bags, and sold you fertilizer. Nice racket they have going on? It is stupidity analogous to paying money in order to breathe air.
If you remove either grass clippings or leaves from your lawn, you are a doofus. If you then spend money on fertilizer, you are an even bigger doofus. Now your grass has no food. Your soil microbiology starts starving and dying. You have nothing alive in your lawn anymore. If you fertilize you make the situation worse, because nothing learns how to feed itself. Your grass/trees/garden plants don't develop fine root hairs or extensive root systems... who needs it when that doofus is feeding me. So now you created a system of dependence. It's like those parents that do everything for their kids and wonder why their 20 year old doesn't know how to do laundry or pay their bills or save money. What did you expect?
So what's the right way?
Remove your lawn. Okay that's the correct answer, and it's gaining popularity, but it's still unlikely anyone reading this will actually do that. But understand this: grass sold it's soul to the devil, and when he did he threw clover under the bus. Clover is labeled a weed and grass isn't. It couldn't be further from the truth. Which one feeds the soil? Which one feeds the bees? So, remove that useless sod lawn and plant a garden and some fruit trees. At the very least, have a clover lawn for the bees.
But I don't care about the planet or the bees, and I still want a useless lawn.
Sigh, okay, instead, cut your grass high and leave the clippings. In the fall, mow the leaves (to shred them) and leave them on the lawn. Sow clover back into the lawn, so that you have nitrogen fixing legume plants again. These plants are in-situ fertilizers (as natural and organic as it gets), and they literally pull the nitrogen out of the air and put it in the soil. Why pay for nitrogen fertilizer when the air is mostly nitrogen? Ever think of how stupid that is, and how there's likely a natural system that does that all by itself in some kind of symbiotic relationship?
Good news! There is. They are called nitrogen fixers and one of the nitrogen fixing plants is clover. Just about every balanced ecosystem on the planet has a nitrogen fixer as part of the complex orchestra of diversity. Black Locust, Beans, peas, peanuts, vetch, autumn olive, seabuckthorn, there are many.
Clover
So why clover? Clover is perfect for a lawn. It's what you would create if you could sit down with 100 of the brightest minds on the planet and bioengineer the perfect grass companion.
It's great for a lawn because it's short. It exists under the grass blades, and can survive constant mowing. There are even microclovers if you hate the white flowers that feed the bees. You won't even know it's there, except for the fact that your lawn is actually green. Even more, it has a wide leaf which provides tons of shade to the soil beneath it, protecting soil microbiology from harmful UV light, keeping your soil life alive. Living soil means that when your grass/plant puts out exudates to attract life to the roots, to eat the nutrient and make it bioavailable to the plant root, it's actually there and able to. Not only this, but this shading of the ground also prevents noxious weeds from germinating that would otherwise germinate through the perfect filtered sun condition which the thin grass leaves provides.
Clover... What an MVP plant, huh? Also, grass is a heavy nitrogen feeder, so wouldn't it be swell if we paired it up with a plant that creates so much nitrogen that it overflows and spills over into the soil? The Robin to our Batman? Lets do it then. How perfect is this little clover "WEED"? Lets wake up and give some love to the little clover buddy. Lets learn facts before we hate on something so amazing. It's science bitch!
Quick aside - I don't like to read anything without learning something new... learning HOW something works. It helps provide an anchor to retain information longterm. I'm going to force that way of life on you now. Here's one paragraph on HOW these plants actually work. Lets nerd out and learn something new today...
Clover fixes (provides) nitrogen by a symbiotic relationship with bacteria who take the nitrogen and store it in clusters in the root system. Then when you mow the lawn and cut the clover, plants do their thing... there is an imbalance in below-ground and above-ground mass, so they even it out. They do this two ways, growing more on top (this is why cutting your lawn rejuvinates it, because it simulates animal grazing and stimulates regrowth). The second way they equate the upper/below ground imbalance is by shedding rootmass below ground. When it does this, not only does it add organic matter to your soil for the microorganisms to eat, but it also separates those fertilizer-nitrogen clusters. These then get released into the soil. So, cutting clover is like direct fertilizing underground, and it feeds everything around it.
But that's not all that happens when you run your land like this... you save money too...
Water
You now have higher organic material content in your soil, which holds water. Rain doesn't sheet across your land as much but instead soaks in. Now you are not only fertilizing less, but also watering less, and your grass is greener. You aren't carting away your land's fertility (and spending money and doing work, and diesel to do so).
It rains and the next day your neighour is out mowing his dry grass. His grass goes wet/dry/wet/dry. Yours? Yours has organic material in it, and it rains once a week and you are just peachy. Yours goes Wet, moist, moist, moist moist...... slightly less moist........ etc.
Even better, replace that lawn with some gardens. Mulch DEEP with wood chips (6-8 inches). Feed that fungus. The fungus amungus that feeds and holds the whole world together. The MVP of the planet. Prevent evaporation of water. Store water IN the land, not ON the land. Build organic matter in your soil and you can't go wrong. Build food for you and nature, and let life back in. Stop buying cookie cutter cut and paste neighbourhoods with nothing but ornamentals and sod grass... food for nothing. Build food, flowers, clover, fruit bushes and trees. Invite life back into your life. Invite wilderness.
We evolved in the forests... Life is in the forest. Return to the forest. Keep your leaves. Plant more trees. Get food off your land, and not just a useless lawn. Your wallet will thank you. The planet will thank you.
Check me out on YouTube, at Canadian Permaculture Legacy