Dealing with Dead Yard Stuff

Years ago, I read a beautiful post, which of course I can no longer find, about the beauty of dead plants in the garden. The author made several good arguments for keeping dead plants around and not "cleaning up" the yard.

For one, leaving seeds on the plant helps feed the birds, as I mentioned in my sunflower post. Some insects and other invertebrates also find homes and food in the dead matter.

Then there's chop and drop. The post I mentioned was the first time I had heard the term, but now whole pages of links appear on a Google search. The concept is simple - simply leave what you prune on the ground. The best fertilizer for a plant is its own dead matter.

So if I cut off dead lantana stalks, I drop the chopped up stalks under the plant. (It's also much easier than getting them all into the city compost cart.) When I prune a shrub, I leave the cut branches underneath to feed the roots. My boxwoods seem much healthier after years of this, even sailing through droughts with little to no watering.

Sometimes, especially with sunflowers, I'll move the dead matter, stalks and such, to a blank area, but it's still chop and drop. Keeps the circle going in my little yard ecosystem.

There are, however, two major exceptions to the chop and drop idea. For one, diseased matter should not stay in the yard. My passionflower leaves often don't look healthy when they die, so into the city compost cart they go. The other is the seeds of out-of-balance plants. If I pull up rescuegrass or cleavers before they seed, the remains go onto the lawn as mulch. After seeding, into the compost cart. Bermuda grass is a special case (more on that later), and all parts of the plant go into the compost cart.