A good leaf collection system for a lawn mower?

I lived on a property that was full of mature oak trees. Truck fulls of leaves. I bought one of the two wheel trailers with a 5 hp motor running the vacuum blower on it made by AGRIFAB. They come with a discharge chute attachment that can be cut to fit most deck discharges. It worked great when the leaves were dry. Using this system the blades of the mower also helped grind and get more leaf volume in the trailer. Don't expect the pile to compost down by itself quickly though. It seemed like it was going to stay dry inside forever. On a super dry day, however, you will be trying to stay away from being downwind - it is dusty and the dry leaf dust choked me up.

Not many details to go with there.

I'll assume you have a JD lawn tractor. I've got one too and stuck a JD MC519 system on it. An impeller fits over the discharge chute of the cutting deck, and is driven by a belt from a blade spindle -- blows stuff back up a big plastic pipe to a little cart on the back. Holds about 20 bushels. Works well when the grass or the leaves are DRY! When they're even a little damp, you'll spend a lot of time cussing and cleaning out the chutes. It's easy to use and dump, so the women use it! Ours is 4 wheel steer 425 JD, so they wack the cart into trees, the house, fences, even caught a car with it once.

If you don't have a JD, and the maker of the tractor doesn't offer anything; you're in to one of the after market boxes with its own engine to power the impeller chute. I'd imagine snugging it up to the cutting deck discharge area would be a problem. Failing all that, one of the pull behind ground driven brush type devices are relativly cheap and work with anything.

They all seem to be a lot more tempermental than a good hay baler (or maybe I have a lot more respect for balers than the leaf catchers), so wait 'til all the material you're collecting is nicely dried.

Steve