Leaf Disposal

Steve@Advance

Well-known Member
Since I sadly live in the city limits, and have lots of trees, every year I have the dreaded job of raking and bagging paper bags of leaves! The hard part is hand stuffing the bags.

I've been thinking of some way to quickly compact them into the bags for disposal. I saw the compactor on YouTube, the converted log spliter. It's purpose though is to make logs. It is much too slow. I saw the one on Ebay that uses the tractor jack over the 55 gal barrel, just didn't look too practical. I thought about a kitchen trash compactor but afraid it wouldn't hold up, but then it might...

Thinking I could lay it on it's back, extend the frame, add a big square funnel... Anyone ever tried? Any brands better than others? Any other ideas? Gotta' keep this low budget too!

Thanks!
 
Those small chipper/shredders work pretty well as long as the leaves are dry. I has a 9 HP Craftsman that I liked. Toro makes something similar.

If you have the space, a simple compost pile eliminates the need for bags and hauling. Woven fence wire or fence panels formed in a circle is enough to get started. The finished compost is great to add to a garden, or for patching a lawn.
 
I have a 9hp chipper sredder but only use it for limbs because mower is faster on leaves. I run over leaves with mower and bagger then compost them in a poultry wire corral.
 
Chop them up good and they will pack fine. Riding mowers seems to mulch leaves better backing over them than going forward. Adding a mulching plug helps even more. A few passes and they are almost gone. If you have a bagger for your mower start by mulching them up then use the bagger to get up the cut up leaves.

Other ideas:

I've heard of people filling a 55 gallon barrel with leaves and using a weedeater stuck down in there to chop them up--don't know how well it works. I'd think a plastic drum would be fine.

I also want to mention that they make 55 gallon drum liner bags. You could chop them up on one and dump them into another that you have lined. When it's full tie it and dump it out the barrel at the road--I assume your dealing with city collection. The liners are just very large trash bags.
 

Where I live pretty much everyone lives on better than two acres, yet I see lot of people hauling leaves and brush to the transfer station. I have plenty of land and a burn pile for branches/ brush, and have never been very interested in raking leaves. I have always thought though that if I really felt the need to rake my leaves before they blew away that I would compost them rather than haul them. Couldn't you just take some woven wire fence and fasten it into a ring and put it in a corner under a tree? Then you could produce some top dirt.
 
Showcrop---I five acres with lots of trees, so I too have LOTS of leaves. The wind tends to bunch them up, so I go over those piles two, or maybe three, times to pulverize them. I have a ZTR mower so it does a serious job of mowing/shredding. Ends up being beneficial to the turf. I also have a large area for burning brush. And I DO have a lot of brush/branches from trimming.
 
A mechanized bag stuffer is going to be expensive and require a lot of storage space for something that you'll only use once a year. Personally I've never seen a commercially-available one, and like you the homemade ones don't seem to work all that well.

To make hand stuffing the bags easier, get yourself a flexible plastic roll-up snow sled. It will hold the bag open and act as a funnel as you stuff the leaves. When the bag is full it slides right out.

Or, something like this:
http://www.findnsave.com/offer/Funnel-For-Paper-Lawn-Leaf-Bags/26529681/

Biodegradable option:
http://danoinc.com/our-products/ecolo-chute/
 
I run two leaf vacuum's on trucks and vac them up for city folks. Maybe hire someone a few times? We'll do a bunch of leaves for $50 a shot if we're nearby another client. Just an idea. Paper bags are a pain
 
Growing up in a big yard full of mature oak and black walnut trees, I learned the fine art of avoiding hard work by mowing them.

Now at my house, I have mulching blades in the lawn tractor. I'd never dream of raking them.

I just drive over them every couple of weeks in the fall - to avoid letting them get too deep.

The blades just turn them to dust - problem solved.
 
I'm with you. I have too many acres to rake. I mulch my leafs. At one of my properties, I have a 48 inch rider with a 3 bags grass/leaf bagger. I can put plastic bags in the bagger. I save those leafs for next springs garden. I have to mulch the leafs and make sure they are dry before I pick them up.

At another location I have a 48 inch mower attached to an agr-vac. That works great for picking up leafs and not mulching first, but I wouldn't attempt to put them in any bags. More acres and way more leafs. Those leafs go on the garden over the winter and the extra leafs go on my mulch pile to be mixed in with horse poo.

Before I tried putting leafs in a bag, I would definitely invest in a mower with a bagger.
 
Mulching the leaves and leaving them on your lawn is supposed to be the best for your yard.
SDE
 
(quoted from post at 19:42:09 12/08/14) Mulching the leaves and leaving them on your lawn is supposed to be the best for your yard.
SDE

Yup, just so long as you lime it good every three years or so.
 
I put a plate over the discharge chute on my rider, and it does a fine job of making the leaves disappear into the lawn. Just moved to town and have lots of big trees with tons of leaves. When I lived on the farm I used to gather up the leaves and run them thru the chipper for mulch. I'd run around the fallen leaves in ever smaller circles to corral them into a pile before running thru the chipper. Waaaay too much work.
 

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