FIELD NOTE 002: Leave the Pine Needles
It's fall cleanup season, and all over Kansas City the blowers are out, yards getting stripped clean for winter. Under the deciduous trees, fine. Under a pine, that clean look costs the tree something, because the needles on the ground are not litter. They are the tree mulching itself.
From Jack's book
In the Evergreens Q&A of "Everything You've Always Wanted to Ask Jack Tobin", a homeowner wrote in certain their evergreen had died, because every single needle had fallen off in the fall. Jack's answer: the tree was almost certainly a bald cypress, a conifer that turns orange and drops all its needles every fall, then leafs back out in spring like nothing happened. Then he added the line that still stings:
"I know of a couple who lost theirs because their 'tree man' said it was dead and cut it down."
Jack Tobin
Fall needle drop is a system, not a symptom
A bald cypress drops everything every fall. It's deciduous. It's supposed to.
A pine sheds its older, inner needles every fall while the outer growth stays green. Also supposed to.
And the needles that land under a pine go to work: they insulate the roots against winter freeze and thaw cycles, hold moisture in the soil, and break down slowly, returning organic matter and nutrients to the tree that dropped them.
Blow them all to the curb in November and you've stripped the tree's winter blanket right before it needs it.
How we handle it
Leave the needle drop under pines and in beds through the winter. That's the whole point of it.
Rake needles off the lawn. A needle blanket smothers turf. The rule is beds yes, grass no.
In spring, fluff what's there before you remulch. Thin it only if it's built up deeper than about four inches, keep it pulled back from the trunk, and put your fresh mulch right over the rest. Two to four inches total is the target.
The one exception: if a spruce or pine shows needle cast (rows of tiny black dots on discolored needles), clean those fallen needles up and get rid of them. Diseased needles don't get to stay.
The cleanest yard on the street in November isn't always the healthiest tree in April. Leave the needles. The tree knows what it's doing.
Platz Landscapes, Blue Springs, Missouri
