What do you do with leaves?
 

I have a pretty big front yard, but its all covered in trees. I used to just not mess with the leaves, but they are like a foot thick by the time they all fall, then the grass is slow to grow in the spring. the last 3 years I've been sucking them up and dumping them in the woods, but it also has been sucking up the dusty topsoil, so now I have more treeroots showing.
I'm considering just mowing the crap out of them this year and see what happens, but thats alot of mulch on the yard. should I pick up some of them and leave some? What do you do? everyone tells me thats why my yard doesn't grow good because of the leaves on it but it really hasn't changed since I been picking them up.

I beleive Allan Cecil is our resident expert on leaves. What to do, what not to do, the lessons learned such as equipment needed, speed, hitch angle etc.

Let's hope he chimes in.

I have 17 trees on my property..... all the leaves blow away. :biggrin2:

I've found the best thing to do with leaves is just mulch them. It may seem like a lot of clippings will be left, but they will biodegrade a lot easier when they are small. Part of my yard has a lot of trees on it and I run the mulcher through them. The grass does grow better, but not as well as the rest of the yard because of the shade from the trees.

I have thick leaves like you describe. I use a pull behind EZ Vac. I stay on top of them when they start falling so I don't get deep piles of wet leaves.

I have tried letting them blow away. That didn't work. Besides, my neighbors didn't like that idea.

I have tried grinding them up with the mower. I don't have a mulcher but I did get them ground up. That didn't seem to spread the ground up leaves too well so I got patches of dead grass from the wet leaves suffocating the grass underneath.

My vacuum didn't suck any top soil that I know of. If you have Maple trees, the roots tend to grow on top of the ground.

Oh, and I have a pretty powerful back pack blower I use to blow the leaves away from trees and other obstacles where I can't get my vacuum. Been working for me for years.

I run over them with the mower. Luckily I don't have enough to talk about. :beerchug:

I sweep and push them into the neighbor's woods!:biggrin2: When my a$$ gets tired from all that seat time, I put the mulch plug in and finish it that way.:beerchug: Today was the last bit of cleanup in the yard from the poplar that was cut down.

I put the bagger on the lawn mower, bag them up and use them in the garden as mulch for the following year, sometime I use them to make leaf mold too.....good stuff.

I raked leaves for 30 years, the trees got bigger and more of them, as I aged also.
Bought a set of gator blades for my 50" deck, made a plug for the discharge chute and make them disappear.
You will have to go over them as they fall,not wait till they are all done.
I raise the deck and go over them 2x and they just disappear.
I still kick myself in the arse for raking them for 30 years.
Works for me :beerchug:

I don't know about that, Rob. :biggrin2:

I just sweep them, and we rake them into our woods on the side of our yard. :beerchug:

Yeah I'm thinking of making a plug for my haban 60inch and mulching them this year. do they may mulching blades to fit that deck?
I just got done puting out lime today, hoping to boost the yard a little since its almost dead from being dry so long. hadn't mowed in 2 months.

I use a lawn sweeper and dump them in a pile for my kids to play in, when there all done I sweep them back up and dump them in the woods.

Just like me! I know those are the neighbors woods, I've been to your house!:biggrin2: it's all good, they won't read this!:beerchug:

I have two trees, and a handful of annoyances some refer to as fruit trees that pretty much feed the squirrels. I do back up to the woods on 2 sides so wind puts a lot of leaves in my yard. I rake or blow everything to where I can get to them with the 128 and have a grinding good time. Preferably do it when it is dry. Sometimes the deck pushes them ahead of the front axle. I always blow the mower off when I'm done, never know where all that debris went. Dad has a round fender Deere 110 with a plate that goes over the end of the deck, it does well grinding them up but sometimes takes a second pass. I find it is best to not let them get too deep to begin with.

Now I do have to rake up hickory nuts, good grief them things are rough on a deck! Dad also has to deal with the cones dropped by a magnolia. If you don't know what they are, they are about the size of a hand grenade. Unlike a pine cone that is very brittle, these are fairly heavy and tough, mower decks won't even begin to grind them up. I did round them up one year using a snow thrower on a 129, talk about ducking for cover!:biggrin2: I'm certain there's a Jeff Foxworthy redneck joke in there!

When I lived in CT I had nothing but trees around my place. Neighbor spent countless hours with his bagger cleaning up every leaf. His lawn was a work of art until the wind blew my leaves into his yard. I don't clean up leaves, God put them where he wanted them. :biggrin2:

I don't clean up leaves either,.. unless it's for money.:beerchug:

Actually those woods belong to my landlord so it's all good.

Growing up we had HUGE trees at my parents. We raked them into piles in the gravel drive way and burned them. Traffic would get slow and nervous. If we we in a hurry we would burn them sum beaches right in the lawn.:beer2::LMAO1:

Always mulch your leaves into the grass. You can mulch up to 300 lbs of leaves per thousand square feet of lawn with no ill effects to the grass. It is good organic matter that improves your soil - leaves are rich in carbon and other nutrients. Applying a little bit of nitrogen like urea speeds things up, the bacteria that munches on leaves uses nitrogen in the process.

I've been raking them onto a big tarp, then dragging it into the woods to dump the leaves. I hadn't really thought about mulching leaves into the soil because I thought the leaves would be too acidic. I bought a 1042 earlier this year that has a deck with the plug, and mulching blades, so maybe I'll give it shot. Either that, or fill the yard up with Cubs so I don't need to worry about the damn grass! :beerchug:

I mulch the leaves also, using my walk-behind Toro. It does a good job. Usually have to do the heaviest areas about two or three times over a couple of weeks.

I'm sure most already know, but if you can, wait until the leaves are fairly dry before mulching. There is much less of a chance of leaving bunched areas of partially mulched leaves.

I block off the deck and mulch when dry and often. Glad this subject came up. I needed to get the plate out for the 44c and for the life of me I can't find it. So I just made a new one for the 50c deck.
FYI source of sheet metal. Few years back I needed some sheet metal for making a storage box for a trailer. Checked the box stores and was pricey. I worked at a electrical supply and bought a panelboard box. I think the size was 24"x60"x5" and 16ga. the price was only $10. This is the metal I used for the block off plate.

Would you guys please STOP PUTTING YOUR LEAVES IN MY WOODS!!! "LEAVE" my woods alone. :biggrin2: I use my Peco Leaf Vac to grind them on my smaller yard. It grinds and collects them, along with the grass clippings leaving the yard looking nice...until more leaves blow in of course. For my larger yard, I use a sweepster broom to put them along the state highway fence. Either way, they always win the war, but my cubs and I usually put up a very valiant effort and give a good account of ourselves.

Cub Cadet 123

Ok, I'll leave your woods alone. :biggrin2:

For most of my adult life my back gives me fits when raking and or shoveling. Our township collects leaves every fall. All you have to do is collect them along the highway and they take them away. For many years I mowed my yard, my mom's yard and the next door neighbors yard. More than a few trees were involved also. I used my mom's lawn sweeper for years but had to empty it every few minutes. I finally had it with leaf collection and invested in a DR lawn vac. I use my 2084 and a 54 in deck. I can use that puppy for my whole yard till it is full. Only problem with that is it is very dusty going with the wind. I do like how those leaves clean up the underside of the deck.

My leaf season started last week. So far, 10 wagon loads to the compost pile. Probably 30 loads until complete in early December unless it snows. TracVac is about 20 years old and works great. Just watch the wind direction so as not to be covered with dust from the top of the wagon.
http://www.onlycubcadets.net/forum/p...pictureid=7078

First year using a trac vac and i wish i had got one years ago. It works great.

We put ours out to the road and the Village comes to take them away, that's why I love paying taxes...........:bash:


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At least it's the end of them for this year!

the front yard goes on the street for the town to take away.

the back yard gets run over a few hundred times with the 127/48 till there gone. (multiple beers required)

Power washer makes a great leaf blower, blow those sucka's in the woods.

I raked my back yard in town for 3 years. Finally last year I said the heck with it and mowed it a few times through November. Then come spring I mulched them up once more. Worked great. I intend on doing the same this year.

Now when I get out in the country, we'll see what needs done lol.

Normally at this time of year (Summer) we do not get any leaves however as I type this it is 39c/102.5 outside and has been and is staying HOT , damm Hot causing the Eucalyptus to dump their leaves
Just mowed house paddock early this morning and now we have a strong NorWesterly blowing more leaves onto my freshly mown areas
Cooler tomorrow and Friday 42c/107.5 , warm enough to melt snow
Oz

several years back one of my neighbors decided to start at the source and set his tree on fire ( atleast thats what we say...:bigthink: ) he was burning his leaves and the wind kicked up and then it was showtime ! ( it was hard to make the call to the fire dept as we were laughing so hard .. ) the fire guys thought we were drunk till they saw it .. they just used the deck gun to put it out , needless he didn't have any more leaves to clean up or have to clean the gutter either , but he did have to replace some of his shingles and gutters ( the gutters from the ammount of water that fell on his roof ) ...