Fall cleanups in Buffalo NY before the snow

Why matted leaves wreck a lawn here

Leaves left flat on the lawn don't blow away once they're wet. They mat into a seal, and in this corner of Erie County the snow usually lands on top of that seal before you get another dry weekend to deal with it.

That's the setup for snow mold. Gray snow mold, caused by the fungus Typhula incarnata, takes hold where snow cover sits for roughly 45 to 60 days over ground that never fully froze. Deep snow that keeps the soil from freezing is exactly what favors it, and mats of dead grass leaves are on the short list of conditions that make it worse, because they hold humidity down in the turf canopy.

You see the result at snowmelt. Circular patches of straw-colored or gray-brown turf, one to three feet across, the leaves matted together and often furred with gray mycelium that fades as the grass dries. Usually only the leaves are killed and the lawn regrows from the crowns, but it regrows slowly, and you spend April raking the matted crust open and overseeding thin spots instead of getting an early green-up. That repair work is a regular part of our spring cleanups.

Clearing leaves in November is far less work than fixing turf in April.

Timing a cleanup around the real leaf drop

The frost-free season around Buffalo runs about 179 days: a last spring freeze near April 24 and a first fall freeze near October 22, going by the long-term normals at the airport. Grass keeps growing for weeks past that first freeze, which is why the cleanup and the final cut belong on the same visit.

Leaf drop, though, is staggered, and the trees on your lot won't all let go together:

• Black walnut is an early one. Its leaves come out late in spring and drop early in fall, so a walnut can be bare while the rest of the yard is still green.
• Maples are the main event on most properties here, and they come down over a stretch of weeks rather than in one weekend.
• Pin oaks are the holdouts. Young trees and the lower branches of older ones hang onto dead brown leaves right through the winter, so some of that litter isn't yours to deal with until spring.

If your lot has mature trees, one visit in October just buys you a second carpet by Thanksgiving. The usual answer is two passes: a bulk removal in late October, then a finish visit once the last maple is bare. On the wooded lots off Goodrich and Salt Roads in Clarence, that second pass can run past Thanksgiving in a mild year.

The final mow rides along with that last visit, cut low enough that blades don't fold over and mat. Same reason our lawn care route keeps mowing into late fall instead of quitting in September.

Bed cutbacks in slow-draining lake-bed soil

Yards around Amherst, Clarence and Lancaster sit on silt and clay left behind by a glacial lake, and the soil survey rates most of it somewhere between somewhat poorly and very poorly drained. It holds water, it heaves through every freeze and thaw cycle, and it turns to concrete if you work it wet. That changes how beds should be put away for winter.

We cut back what actually needs it. Hostas, peonies, daylilies and anything else that collapses into mush come down to a few inches so disease isn't overwintering in the debris. Coneflower, sedum, rudbeckia and ornamental grasses can stay standing if you want the winter structure and the birds working the seed heads. Marginally hardy plants in a zone 6a or 6b winter usually do better with their top growth left on as insulation until spring.

What we won't do is dig or recut edges in saturated November clay. Beds worked wet stay compacted for a full season. Mulch topping and edge work are spring jobs, once the ground drains.

Beds along Transit, Sheridan and Main take road salt spray all winter. Leaving a few inches of stem and an even mulch layer over the crowns helps those plantings shrug off some of it.

Where the leaves actually end up

There are two ways to get rid of them, and the right one depends on your street and the calendar.

In Amherst, the Highway Department collects loose bulk leaves from the right of way, not the street, between October 15 and December 1. Yard waste is a separate program: April 1 through November 30, weekly on your regular collection day, in paper bags or in containers with two handles and the covers off. Branches have to be cut to four feet and bundled with biodegradable twine if they aren't in a container, and plastic bags don't get taken at all. Every town sets its own dates and rules, so check yours before you count on curbside pickup.

We'll windrow everything out to the right of way if the town's window is open and that's what you want. If it's closed, if you're past the yard waste cutoff, or if you'd rather not stare at a leaf pile for two weeks, we tarp everything out and it leaves with the truck that day.

Cleanups turn up more than leaves fairly often, usually behind a garage or along a fence line. We can take the cracked pots, broken furniture and old brush pile out at the same time. Mention it when you ask for an estimate so we bring the right truck.

Getting the property ready for plow season

The fall cleanup is the last clear look anyone gets at your property before it disappears under snow, so it's worth doing more than moving leaves around.

Leaves that wash into the catch basin at the end of your driveway freeze into a plate of ice by January, and then meltwater has nowhere to go but across your apron. We pull them off the drain grates and out of the gutter line. We clear the curb face too, so the first plow pass, ours or the town's, isn't packing wet leaves into a frozen ridge across your driveway entrance.

If we're plowing you this winter, the fall visit is when we walk the driveway. We note where the asphalt actually ends, where the beds and sprinkler heads sit, and where a marker needs to go before the ground hardens. Guessing at driveway edges in a whiteout is how lawns get torn up.

Same crew and the same trucks, fall through spring. You're not explaining your property to a new company in January.