I Hate Leaves

I’d rather do a lot of things than cut grass or shovel snow. However I HATE CLEANING UP LEAVES. Raking, blowing, bagging, etc. Total PIA. So I was wondering if anyone has any experience with one of these things? This one is sold by Sears and it claims to suck of leaves and sticks and chop the whole mess up at a 4:1 ratio.

SR

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I’m with you Steve. Even more irritating when the leaves blow over from the neighbors house!!! I think it is because it was one of my primary chores growing up as a kid. I wonder if a tool rental place might have something similar so you can test drive it before buying the cow.

I asked this question last fall. Mixed reviews. I found one at a local rental shop, and I am planning on trying it this year.

I’m totally with you, Steve, I hate leaves too. And we get PLENTY of them.

I’ve tried renting that machine as a try before you buy strategy. I didn’t like it because at some point you still have the hassle of getting the shredded leaves out of the bag and into leaf bags. You also have to store the machine and keep in running condition between uses, all of which involves a huge amount of faffing around.

And then, as a reward, you STILL get the fun of disposing of the leaves! Yeeeeeaahhhhh! How much fun can one guy have?

I found the best solution by accident. I got a Snapper self propelled mower with the Ninja recycling blade.

I don’t use a bagger at all, I just mow the lawn with the Snapper. It shreds up the leaves like pipe tobacco and they just disappear into the lawn. No bagging, no bag wrangling, no leaf dump trips, no fuss, no muss. It’s just terrific not to be bagging leaves anymore.

If the leaves have really fallen, I have to go over an area twice sometimes to shred them up, but they all get it eventually and the Snapper turns them into confetti and they disappear. If there aren’t a lot of leaves, I use my Deere tractor to mow and blow the leaves into a central strip in the middle of the lawn, then the Snapper gets brought in for the kill. 10 passes back/forth and the leaves are all gone.

In really deep leaves, it can sometimes take some back/forth mowing because the Snapper tends to push the leaves, but it’s still vastly easier than busting my buttski mowing.

I’m really, really glad to be out of the leaf bagging business entirely.

Grouse

Here you go, Steve: Leaf Vac post from last fall

The fastest way I have devised we use at the cabin where’s there a place to take them unbagged. We use an old queen sized bed spread to rake piles on then two of us dump that into a trailer. That moves piles very quickly.
I too hate raking. Since we have so many oaks at the cabin we skip fall raking and only do it in the spring. At home I don’t have that luxury but I am in a newer neighborhood and the trees aren’t very big.

I will count myself lucky,here in the country,I have the biggest leaf blower known to man,its called the wind!! yep,my yard fills up,the wind blows it away!!
I realize that wont work in town but TFG idea sounds like the way I would go if I had to,and it breaks down into natural micronutrients for your soil,free lawn food!!

That 40 mph wind we had yesterday blew most of my leaves away from my yard

I hate leaves too, they make it hard to find the golf ball, and i’m always in the fairwayor not

How much is that thing?

I thought I was escaping the honey do task of leaf blowing. Nope. Leaves fall here too. Screwed up my lawn last winter too, so this year I’m staying on top of them.

mplspug wrote:

How much is that thing?

I thought I was escaping the honey do task of leaf blowing. Nope. Leaves fall here too. Screwed up my lawn last winter too, so this year I’m staying on top of them.

Sears wants $550 for their machine. Enough to give me serious pause or consider renting, or maybe trying the lawnmower and mulching the heck out of them.

SR

I run them over about 3 times with the mower and then pick them up with the bagger attached. I can dump them in the woods around the house, so at least I don’t have to bag them. Takes about a whole day to do the yard… I do it twice a fall… price I pay for living in the woods I guess !

Grouse hit the nail on the head. Go buy a set of mulching blades for your mower. I go over my yard several times (I have a rider so it’s not really work) and presto……they are gone. The PIA for me is the flower gardens & rock gardens, I use a blower on those but it still takes time. Blow them into the yard and then hit them with the mulcher.

Country living here – and I wait until they are dry and hit them a couple times with the rider……they mulch up and go back into the lawn. Easy peasy. Takes me about a 6pak to get the whole yd done.

Mulching blades? Aren’t the normal blades mulching? Or is your lawn mower 30 years old from when people bagged grass? 50/50 smart arse, serious question.

My problem here is they recommend not cutting grass less than 3″. And normal mowing doesnt mulch leaves as fine as grass, so I get a lot of “thatch” in the pockets.

I’ll have to look into renting one here, because that machine looks like it would do better than the hassle of blowing into a pile and bagging.

mplspug wrote:

Mulching blades? Aren’t the normal blades mulching? Or is your lawn mower 30 years old from when people bagged grass? 50/50 smart arse, serious question.

No, the mulching blades are totally differnt.

My Shapper mower’s blade has two sharp cutting surfaces on each end of the blade. One cutting surface is higher than the other, so basically the leaf gets sliced twice with each blade reveloution instead of just once.

Add to that the Snapper has a plate covering where the discharge chute normally is on a mower. So everything that goes in gets cut up multiple times before it drops out the bottom.

With mulching blades, grass clippings are basically almost a fine dust, not long strands like you get from a normal mower.

I’ll take a picture tomorrow of the area where I mulched leaves last weekend to give you an idea of how fine they end up. It’s the best way to deal with leaves, I haven’t bagged a leaf in years, they all just disappear into the lawn.

Here’s a similar Snapper to the one I have: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/grd/5243518322.html

Grouse

I mow the leaves into a pile with my rider, then back the mower through them. The rider is more effective to mulch the leaves when going in reverse…

I just use a leaf blower backpack style and a $100 gift card to a nice restraunt. Watch for the wind direction forecast, then hand the gift card to the neighbor they go out to eat and I blend in the leaves in their yard with the leaf blower.

On a serious note, the reverse thing is true…. Not sure why but it does help.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>mplspug wrote:</div>
Mulching blades? Aren’t the normal blades mulching? Or is your lawn mower 30 years old from when people bagged grass? 50/50 smart arse, serious question.

No, the mulching blades are totally differnt.

My Shapper mower’s blade has two sharp cutting surfaces on each end of the blade. One cutting surface is higher than the other, so basically the leaf gets sliced twice with each blade reveloution instead of just once.

Add to that the Snapper has a plate covering where the discharge chute normally is on a mower. So everything that goes in gets cut up multiple times before it drops out the bottom.

With mulching blades, grass clippings are basically almost a fine dust, not long strands like you get from a normal mower.

I’ll take a picture tomorrow of the area where I mulched leaves last weekend to give you an idea of how fine they end up. It’s the best way to deal with leaves, I haven’t bagged a leaf in years, they all just disappear into the lawn.

Here’s a similar Snapper to the one I have: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/grd/5243518322.html

Grouse

But aren’t basically all lawn mowers set up this way? I bought a new mower last year and even though it also came with a bag, its a mulching lawn mower.

For a while I was mulching lots of our leaves, but we ended up getting blight (a fungus) on our maples which I believe resulted from too much decomposing material in our grass in the shady areas. Anyway, I cleaned up the areas, stopped mulching them and haven’t had blight since. We have WAY too many leaves!

If I mulched mine and left them lay, my grass would be dead from snow/leave mold and I would have a slick of leave slime to deal with. Then again, I have 16 mature oaks (took 20 out), 6 pines and 3 mature maples to contend with on 2 acres. MULCH MULCH MUCLH then pick up… if it’s dry out, I wear a dust mask or I’d choke. Some spots the leaves are so thick, they just “pile” in front of the deck, eventually get up to the manifold and start smoking !!!

This thread is depressing me…

I have a Toro electric blower. It works pretty good, but leaf blowing is still tedious, just not as much as raking. I wish it was about 2Xs as powerful. Even the bagger/chipper mode stinks. I found out it was quicker to lay it on its side on the ground and scoop leaves into the chute.

I actually don’t mind playing with leaves. blow them to a pile bag them haul away. sometimes burn depending where. we do leaves at home at the cabin and when we had the camper out there.

pug I got a gas and electric blower. that electric blower has enough power it blows my granite rocks right out of my border around the house if I don’t be careful!

I also put my maple leaves in the garden to till in!

Yeah, maybe I am being hard on my blower…

It works fine as long as I keep up with them falling. Its the leaves that start layering up in pockets that are damp that are a pain.

As a follow-up, I rented this lawn vac yesterday and thought I’d share my experiences.

I have a hilly yard with a lot of maple trees. Last year, I spent several days with my leaf blower, a rake, and those fantastic paper leaf bags. I ended up with somewhere around 45 bags of leafs. This year, I decided to try something new.

The two major benefits for me are that it only took me about 3 hours to do the entire lawn, and it drastically compacted things. I ended up with about two 4′ x 8′ trailer loads full.

There are a few limitations/drawbacks:
1) It gets heavy in a hurry (self-propelled would be a nice option)
2) It does not like sticks, no matter what the manufacturer says (they clog it)
3) Dry leaves work much better
4) If the leaves are really thick, you’ll have to go over them once with the unit raised high and again with it lowered
5) It’s loud and very dirty

This particular one cost me about $60 for a few hours. With my time savings, I am pretty certain that I’ll be renting one again next year.

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To fit in better in the cities you should put 20s on that thing. Have to keep up the street cred at all times.
DT

I refuse to bag I just mulch and it looks like I raked and I have a ton of leaves in my yard.

https://www.toro.com/en/homeowner/walk-behind-mowers/timemaster-20199

deertracker wrote:

To fit in better in the cities you should put 20s on that thing. Have to keep up the street cred at all times.
DT

If I owned it, I would!