Hauling out the leaf blower

There is a cherry plum tree (Prunus cerasifera 'Krauter Vesuvius') between our house and our neighbor’s, and for the past few weeks it has been dropping leaves and fruit onto succulent area below it. Ordinarily I wouldn’t worry too much about it, but it’s not a good thing for succulents to be smothered by leaves that, as they decompose, could cause rot.

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Cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera 'Krauter Vesuvius')…
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…dropping leaves on everything…
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…adding a nice touch of color…
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…but potentially causing problems with rot, especially once the rainy season starts

I regularly rant and rave about lazy gardeners using leaf blowers instead of brooms to get rid of lawn clippings and leafs on sidewalks and driveways. Don’t even get me started on the noise pollution I have to endure as I try to work in my home office.

But when it comes to cleaning this particular area of our yard, I do resort to using a leaf blower. It would be much too time-consuming to rake or pick out the cherry plum leaves from among the succulents.

So even though I felt a bit guilty (not to mention hypocritical), out came the leaf blower and within a short period of time, this succulent area looked 100% better.

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Agave parryii ‘Truncata’ after the mini hurricane had come through
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The whole area looks much better…
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…and the plants can breathe more easily

This job will be on my to-do list a few more times before the tree has dropped all its leaves. Secretly, I must admit that I do like using the leaf blower. But don’t tell anyone.

Comments

  1. The dead leaves hold so much moisture that can be detrimental to succulents. Leaf blower can be one's best tool in the autumn, especially lots more leaves are about to fall from somewhere else :)

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  2. Hey you know what! I am going to get a leaf blower. There is an area in my backyard where the leaves always fall all over my succulent planter. A lot of the time I will leave them there because they act like insulation. But in the spring it is a pain in the butt to remove them. A blower would be great. In the front where I have my echeveria, aeonium, misc. planter I actually try to pile them on then I put that green frost material over them. It saves them from the frost and so far I have not had a problem with rot or disease.

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