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rmaynard

It's that time of the year. How do you handle leaves?

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smoreau

This year I got lucky and Sandy blew most of my neighborhoods leaves into the next county!! There hasn't been one leaf in my yard for a week!! But I use my 417a with a blower bagger set up and it works great!

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waterlooboy2hp

Nicely done. :thumbs:

Can we see how you mounted up the cage too.

The overall frame assembly looks like this. --- The original bagger bracket is still on the lawn tractor. 2 vertical bars are bolted to the inside of it and remain on the tractor. The horse shoe shapped lower frame, is hinged to the botton end of the 2 vertical bars. (pull the door hinge pins and the lower frame is off). The top cross pipe is made to drop into the original bagger frame, just like the original bagger hood did.

I used side links from a set of snow chains, with a snow chain link clip on each end ( dog chain clips will also work), to connect from the pipe cross bar, to each end of the lower frame. Thye dog cage is also hinged to the ends of the frame, for dumping.

The inside of the cage is lined with SEPERATE pieces of 1/4" mesh rat wire, so the cage will fold up flat. I fastened the rat wire with hog rings. One entire side of the cage became the door. Original shoot tube was cut off and 8" flex hose was used to reach heating duct pieces at the top of the cage. Also, I used .060" clear plastic, to cover the top and front side of the cage. It is held on with hooks, made form chain links. It keeps the dust and chaf, from coating me from behind.

I already had these pics, but will take some of the details, if you want me to post them. ----- John

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chesbaycruiser

I used to hate leaf duty...now it's therapy!

The first two shots were taken at our little river cottage a couple of years ago; the third shot I took last night after getting up leaves here at my house.

You can see in the photos how well the TracVac mulches and reduces the leaves. The river shots were taken one afternoon after I sucked up about 2 years worth of leaves and pine tags. (There's a silly YouTube video of that afternoon here. Please ignore the doofus in the video!)

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Duff

I'm somewhere between specialwheelhorse and Jim D on this chore. I start by making a pass across the center of the lawn, turning around and coming back so I'm blowing the leaves (I use SD decks) toward the sides of the lawn. I repeat this, mowing outward as I go and as the leaves build up my Gator blades start grinding them up. By the time I've gotten to the outside edges they're pretty much history. I leave the ground-up leaves on the lawn and fertilize with lime in the spring to reduce the acidity created by the decaying leaf mulch. If an area gets too much build-up, I simply mow over it blowing the other way and spread things out more evenly before snow flies. The result has been a pretty nice lawn, self-fertilizing except for the limestone. A couple of lawns I do are very large, so I simply divide them into managable rectangles and go through the same process. If I get too many leaves windrowed at once, I back over them with the deck raised up and it grinds them up quite well. I mow about four acres of lawns all told between my, my mother's and a neighbor's properties, and I haven't so much as lifted a rake in four years. I do occasionally use a leaf blower to get into corners and under some hedges, but otherwise my tractors' mower decks do all the work.

Duff :thumbs:

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Raider

I mow them into mulch on the lawn also, my soil needs all the organic matter I can get. I even rake leaves out of the non lawn areas onto the lawn and mow them up. Minimal lawn here, far more trees than lawn, I get away with a Honda walk behind with quadracut, great mulcher! I have to mow often or it gets overwhelming, not all the leaves fall at once. I don't mind taking the mower for a walk though, behaves better than my dog LOL.

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CRE1992

This year I got lucky and Sandy blew most of my neighborhoods leaves into the next county!! There hasn't been one leaf in my yard for a week!! But I use my 417a with a blower bagger set up and it works great!

By living in NJ, and being less than 30 minutes from the shore Sandy has decided to relocate most of the leaves from my family's property across the street and into my neighbors yards. Which is perfectly okay to me, as normally their leaves wind up in my yard!! However I still have some raking, gutter cleaning, and leaf picking up to.

However my neighbors moved the leaves from their yards, into the woods behind their houses. So even better for me,

Though being in college, I work for an electrical company during the summer. They need me back bad because they are overwhelmed with the amount of work they are getting requests for! So tomorrow, Friday and Saturday I will be working for them and replacing electrical services a long the coastal towns of NJ. We have a large senior age apartment complex to redo also. The electrical distribution building was flooded and when the power came back on it blew all of the meters, and had fire damage. We have well over 40 meters to rewire and replace within the next 3 days at one job location alone! Old people need there power! So my leaf removal will be side tracked for awhile!

-Charles

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Coadster32

Gotta get thru the 6"+ of snow before I can tackle the leaves. :banghead:

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CasualObserver

I've been seeing this on Craigslist around me this fall. A JRCO Leaf Plow. Probably be useful for you guys who live on a line of timber or woods that you just dump your leaves in. Never used one myself, but looks interesting. Looks like it incorporates some tines that ride along the bottom to rake the grass.

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stevasaurus

I get so many leaves, and we are allowed to put them in the street, so getting them out from things and plowing them to the street works good for me.

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AMC RULES

Steve, I'm thinking you probably get more work out of that snow plow during the summer...

than you do during the winter. :)

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rmaynard

Well, as I said earlier, leaf reduction would not be over until Thanksgiving. I was wrong. I finished today. Here is the final load being dumped in the back of my woods.

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Yes, that is a John Deere pulling the Cyclone Rake.

The B-100 gets a workout each time as well, pushing the leaves to the back.

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And of course, here is the B-100 in action.

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AMC RULES

Really, the video is private? :scratchead:

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rmaynard

Ooops... I will take care of it ASAP.

Try it now Craig.

Edited by rmaynard

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stevasaurus

Gees Bob, you did not have to make that B-100 blurry just because you painted it green. :) You have some serious leaves there Mate.

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AMC RULES

Ooops... I will take care of it ASAP.

Try it now Craig.

There you go, much better now....looks like you've turned leaf duty into a fun chore Bob.

At least the pushing the leaves part of it. :)

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rmaynard

Gees Bob, you did not have to make that B-100 blurry just because you painted it green. :) You have some serious leaves there Mate.

And that is only a small portion of the pile. Triple what you see.

And by the way, the B-100 doesn't always run that bad. Didn't realize it was running on fumes until it died right after the push. Had to walk all the way back up the path to the shed for some gas. :banghead:

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Wheelhorse84

Love the blurry green thing.

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rmaynard

Love the blurry green thing.
I know there are young people that view this forum, so I didn't want to offend anyone. :rolleyes:

Sent from my MB520 using Tapatalk 2

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