The Zero Sum Landscape

What is the Zero Sum Landscape? It is a fancy way of saying that the less nutrients that you remove from your landscape, the better off it will be. As an example, let us say that your landscape has a nutrient value of 1000 units. Every time you mow, you bag up the grass and dispose of it. That grass has a value of 2 units. Not very much. However, wait; you mow that lawn every two weeks, for six months. That adds up to 24 units of nutrient value. Still not so bad.
     Those 1000 units of nutrients are getting turned into lots of things though. The grass, woody material in your trees and shrubs, leaves, even produce from your garden, if you have one. You build a burn pile in your yard and burn up some fallen tree limbs. 15 units. Was there a hurricane? Maybe it's 50 units. In the fall, you rake up and remove the leaves from your yard. That could be another 50 units, leaves are nutrient dense. You can see the trend, all of these little amounts add up. "Nickeling and Diming" away your nutrients, as my mother would have said. After years, you notice that your plants are growing as they should. 
     What can you do? You can buy lots of expensive fertilizers. You risk applying too much and burning and killing your plants from fertilizer burn. On the other hand, you can apply too little and not help out enough.
      Or, remove less. Use a mulcher mower. Alternatively, you can get a mulching adapter for your existing mower. 
      Set up a compost pile. Collect the leaves from your yard, and let them break down, and then you can reapply them. The less you take out, the less you have to replace. Even easier, leave your leaves to rot in place, if you can (except on lawns, which will suffocate under leaf cover). When leaves decompose they create all kinds of beneficial chemistry in the soil.  
      Add some fruit and vegetable trash to your compost, some coffee grounds, and all of a sudden you have a positive trend in the nutrient value of your yard. Your yard will love you for it, and all of your neighbors will want to know how you did it. And it couldn't be easier, because sometimes less (that you take out), is more, in a Zero Sum Landscape.