Another use for pine needles is to put them in your strawberry bed. I have a companion planting book that suggests this as a way to make the strawberries taste more like wild strawberries.
The needles are both poky and damaging to the lawn. Pine trees generally dry your grass out as they are large area feeders. By all means, rake them up but chances are that you may not be able to grow much else under there. There are a few invasive variagated foliage type ground covers you can plant under conifers (check with your garden centre ), but it is suggested that you dig in landscape edging to contain them. Have fun!!
We were in an area of NC this year and we saw pine needles being raked in heaps around the pine trees leaving indentions around the inner base. The pine cones were also thrown into the same pile in people's lawns.
We usually leave the needles and cones under the pine tree and it keeps us from having to weedeat all the way under them which is hard to get at with long branches in the way, but we've never heaped them before.
If you're fortunate to have pine trees nearby, rake the nutrient-rich needles in a pile and then spread a 3-inch layer throughout your plantings. They're especially attractive surrounding the base of trees and bushes. Pine needles are acidic so they make ideal mulch around acid-living shrubs like azaleas and rhododendrons.good luck.
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