LEAVES - A never ending battle. How do you handle yours?

[rmaynard 14,860]

This post is a resurrection of one I started in 2013. This is a 2017 update on my leaves, and what I have added to assist in the battle.

 

Once again it is that time of the year when living on a 100% wooded lot is no longer fun. All summer long we enjoy the shade provided by the 80 to 100 foot tall oak trees, but when the leaves begin to drop in October, the job of cleaning them up continues until late in November.

 

So each year I wonder, how do other members get rid of their leaves. Here is what I use.

 

This Cyclone Rake was purchased around 1999, and is the best investment that I have made for yard cleanup. A few repairs have been made over the years; a new bag and frame was been purchased in 2013, but the original 5.5 HP Tecumseh engine is still going strong.

 

This week I went to my local Stihl dealer and purchased a new addition to the cleanup equipment. A BR700, backpack blower.

 

This is Stihl's most powerful backpack blower. 

 

So, what are you using to handle your leaves this fall?

 

[Adams94 1,065]

Chop them up with the mower, then pick up,with lawn sweeper.  Dump in garden and burn 

 

[570 Productions 51]

I blow them into big piles and plow them into the woods with the WheelHorse

[cleat 4,936]

I mainly use a 520 with a 48" deck and power bagger.

 

Bagger seems to mulch the leaves so they take up much less space.

 

 

I then pile and push them over the edge of the ravine at the back of my property after dumping them into my little wagon and hauling them there.

 

Cleat

 

[dcrage 621]

I "mulch" my leaves with my 310-8 by 'mowing' 2 or 3 times. Then connect the 37" SD to the bagger and collect the leaves, dumping the collected leaves on my compost pile. The "mulching" allows for heavier loads and less stoppage to unclog the fill tube. 

[ohiofarmer 3,155]

 I used to mulch them in place, but especially underneath a mulberry tree, the nitrogen effect of the leaves made the grass grow so fast that I ended up mowing that part of the yard twice as much as the rest. Now i take the big Stihl and blow them on a big pile Mrs Farmer and I then drag the leaves on a tarp to the slow growing areas of the yard and grind them to dust with the 42' SD. We put at least a foot of leaves total on the thin areas and it really made a difference

 

 A little church group asked for suggestions for a church project. I always had a low opinion of doing walks for money even though the money goes to good use.If I am gonna exercise, it may as well produce something of value beyond the excercise My suggestion is to find elderly people who need their leaves raked and we can do it and then transport them to my place. I put in a new leach bed and the grass over that area needs a bunch of organic matter. I am getting the trailer ready with high sides to haul the leaves to my place.

 

 i thought it would be a good project simply because raking leaves by hand was the only time i got a blister from using a tool, and older people have much thinner skin on their hands. We will test it out this year and do a few yards to do a time and manpower study and see where it goes from here. I can see a need in the future for a rear bagger unit or a power rake

 

 EDIT   I still do not know what is causing the lines through the script??????

Edited October 8, 2017 by ohiofarmer

[cleat 4,936]

5 hours ago, dcrage said:

I "mulch" my leaves with my 310-8 by 'mowing' 2 or 3 times. Then connect the 37" SD to the bagger and collect the leaves, dumping the collected leaves on my compost pile. The "mulching" allows for heavier loads and less stoppage to unclog the fill tube. 

 

My tube clogs sometimes as well.

I thought that was just me.

 

The left bag fills first and no issues but once it is full, sometimes the tube clogs prior to filling the right side bag.

[Mikey the Monkey 697]

This is my contraption in progress. Still needs some fine tuning. Leaves are also a battle I think about all year long. I love the big maples except when their leaves are 6 inches deep 

[ebinmaine 62,932]

8 hours ago, cleat said:

my little wagon

sweet wagon!

4 hours ago, ohiofarmer said:

 EDIT   I still do not know what is causing the lines through the script??????

I don't know either but we all know if you find pretty much any of the people under about 10 years of age, they'll fix it.

24 minutes ago, Mikey the Monkey said:

contraption in progress

well said... sooo many awesome ideas produced that way.

8 hours ago, rmaynard said:

living on a 100% wooded lot

Us too.... but we are "lucky" enough Not to have much grass at all. 12 or so acres and nearly nothing to mow.

Front yard is Very small and mostly moss. That is being changed to a grass-free stone/perennial scape for further elimination of mowing.

We do hand rake and just chuck 'em in the woods...

[953 nut 51,459]

I have a variety of trees and this provides me with several opportunities to have seat time. The Tulip Poplars have already lost most of their leaves and I have mulched them in place with a rear discharge 42" mower. The Beach Trees are beginning to drop leaves now and the Walnuts will come next. When the majority of them are on the ground along with the last of the Poplars I use the side discharge mower along the creek and other areas where the lawn sweeper has difficulty and come back to pick up the wind rows later. I will use the pull behind sweeper and 42" rear discharge mower to mulch and gather them for the compost pile. I mow about an acre and a half of lawn with lots of trees so I have lots of compost. Repeat the whole process for the Maples, repeat again for Oaks, and a final sweep for the Bradford Pear trees.

In a typical year I will have a pile three feet high, ten feet deep and forty feet long. In the spring and again a couple of times each summer I will use the front end loader to "turn the pile" and before the next leaf harvest I consolidate last years leaves and other stuff (grass, saw dust, kitchen scraps etc.) into a four foot square bin where it will continue composting for two more years.

4 hours ago, ohiofarmer said:

do not know what is causing the lines through the script?

Top left corner as you type the tool bar has a tab with a line through it; you must have hit it by mistake.

If you high-lite the text that is lined through and go back and click on it again it should remove the strike out.

[520hC-120 136]

41 minutes ago, ebinmaine said:

 

I don't know either but we all know if you find pretty much any of the people under about 10 years of age, they'll fix it.

11 years old and when typing a comment in a thread there is a bunch of edit options at the top and he must have clicked the 5th one with the S with the line through it by accident.

Edited October 8, 2017 by 520hC-120

[rjg854 10,707]

I mainly just mulch them in place, by spring most the evidence is long gone.

[ACman 7,505]

For really big jobs I may just bust out the the ultimate fall cleanup machine....  !

 

Edited October 8, 2017 by ACman

[Sarge 3,462]

I pick them up with the Crapsman 46" sweeper , dump into piles and use the Stihl blower/vac to pick them up/mulch and dump into the trailer . From there , either burn them or most times just haul them off to the village's dump and burn pile just outside town . It is a lot of work without a dedicated lawn vac but I can get it done in a day or two . 2-3 rounds of that is normally all it takes depending upon how much wind we get - the other properties and their owners really don't do much cleanup other than mowing/mulching .

 

Sarge

[squonk 38,839]

I mulch my leaves with the 42" RD Recycler deck. Then when my neighbor's leaves blow into my yard I mulch them with my 42" Recycler deck. As the neighbor's leaves get deeper, what's left behind from my 42" recycler deck, I pick them up with my 42" Brinly sweeper then grind them up with a Flowtron leaf eater. Then they get dumped into the garden. Notice at no time did my neighbor go outside to take care of his leaves. 

[ebinmaine 62,932]

1 hour ago, ACman said:

For really big jobs may I bust out the the ultimate fall cleanup machine....  !

 

Overkill is in the eye of the beholder.

This to me is not overkill  !!

Just efficient. 

[rmaynard 14,860]

My neighbor is 87 and can't do anything with his yard, so I not only have to do my acre+, but his as well. On two+ acres of heavily (oak) wooded property, the shear volume is leaves is unimaginable by some. Those of you who can just mulch and leave until spring, really have no leaves to speak of. "Leafing" as I call it starts now, and usually continues through the first or second week of November. It used to be that I could get away with a once per weekend pickup when it was just my yard, and even after having 10 trees removed over the last 2 years, I'm still can't keep up with that frequency. So it's usually all day Saturday, then again on Wednesday until done. The first picture that I posted represents one day of leaf pickup. By the end of it all, the entire area in the picture will be that deep with shredded leaves.

 

[AMC RULES 36,940]

To make short work of all them leaves...

seems you could use a couple of these Bob.

[rmaynard 14,860]

That's why I got the Stihl. Much easier to get into the flower beds, around shrubs and areas where a tractor just can't go. Of course my wife's first complaint was that I was going to blow all the mulch out of the beds, and yes, before I got the hang of it, I had cleaned the flower beds down to plain dirt. Oh well, mulch is cheap I told her.

[ebinmaine 62,932]

1 hour ago, rmaynard said:

mulch is cheap

My mulch salesman tells me I need to replace often anyways. ....

[rmaynard 14,860]

39 minutes ago, ebinmaine said:

My mulch salesman tells me I need to replace often anyways. ....

 

Typical salesman. 

[953 nut 51,459]

4 hours ago, squonk said:

Notice at no time did my neighbor go outside to take care of his leaves

You have such a generous neighbor, gives you all of his compostable material;   what a guy!        

[squonk 38,839]

45 minutes ago, 953 nut said:

You have such a generous neighbor, gives you all of his compostable material;   what a guy!        

I couldn't yell at him before because he was the village justice. But he retired this year! 

[AMC RULES 36,940]

 What ever you do Mike...

don't give him a piece of your mind.  

[dcrage 621]

13 hours ago, cleat said:

The left bag fills first and no issues but once it is full, sometimes the tube clogs prior to filling the right side bag.

 

Cleat

I usually stop after the left bag fills and switch bag positions.  My thinking was I got a bigger load of leaves since the left position gets packed so well. So I opt for filling the left position twice before dumping.