As the nights get longer and the leaves turn brown, lawn owners everywhere reach for their rakes. This year, experts say that the fall ritual of raking leaves might make you miss an opportunity to give your lawn a health boost. Instead, letting a thin layer of leaves sit and then decompose on your lawn will give the underlying soil a rich reward of organic nutrients. Susan Barton, a professor of landscape horticulture at the University of Delaware told The New York Times that this practice would improve soil health. “A forest has the richest soil there is, and that happens because leaves are f…