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OT: What is best way to get rid of leaves?

G

Gun guru

Well-known Member
I have about 1/3 of an acre of grass to cut with the rest of the land being all wooded (heavily).

As of this fall I have used a push mower to throw/shoot the leaves out of the discharge chute, with the chute pointing to the woods. I just keep throwing the leaves to the woods until the leaves are 6 inches deep or so then I use a leaf blower to blow what the mower couldnt do into the woods.
I use the blower to get the leaves off the gravel drive.

Questions:
1. Who makes the best most powerful leaf blower?

2. Do any of you guys use that cyclone rake thing that is advertised? (looks like a pain in the a$$ to set up) But it might work real good, I dont know.

3. Does anyone hand rake anymore, I dont cause it will tear up my shoulders and take hours and hours.

I really cant mulch the leaves cause the leaves are about 2-3 inches deep in the grass.
 
A multch kit on a mower will take care of them. You just need to do them as they fall and not wait until all down. Dad has been doing this for many years now with good results. We used to gather them all up and dump them in the woods.That's too much work !

I hate these people that try and burn (smolder) them. Just grind them up and they dissappear. Good for the soil too.
 
I have a Little Wonder walk-behind blower. There's no way I could deal with the leaves on my place without it. It was not cheap, but it's paid for itself many times over. Little Wonder claims that their 5 horsepower unit will outperform a 9 HP Billy Goat.
 
Hello gun guru,
Here is one way, mine is 3 years old.
Works good behind the tractor.I think is 16 bushel capacity, but don't quote me on that!
Guido.
a7119.jpg
 
I have a yard vac I bought at TSC. Works pretty good, I add the leaves to my compost pile.
 
I have an older (94) Toro Push mower (expensive
model) For 5 years I had heavy leaves. One trip
and then go crossways and I could hardly find a
trace of leaves. In 5 years my grass always
remained green and healthy. Chuck
 
I used to rake about 1.5 acres each year. Mature trees - maples, oaks, birch, poplar etc. so I literally hauled about a ton a year by dragging them across the yard on a tarp to the compost pile. Hard on the knees, shoulders, back, you name it. Last fall I purchased a Brinly Poly-Vac system for behing my rider. Boy what a difference! All chopped up and ready to rot. The only walking I do is to blow leaves away from around tight spots (trailer type). I wanted a cyclone but they are more costly due to bonus features and I don't have $$ for bonus features. Cyclone is mounted with swivel wheels and has neat features like self-unloading (actually you reverse the process and suck the mulch out of the hopper and blow it where you want it). They use a molded polymer impeller insted of a weldment which takes quite a beating (which, by the way, they will NOT sell seperately unless you own a Cyclone already), I just make sure I know that everything big is picked up. The collapsing feature might be necessary for some but if I take my hitch off and the 8" suction tube I only need about 45" X 60" of storage space. Cyclone is about $1300 and the Brinly was $800 so I settled. All in all I have never had this much fun cleaning the yard in fall or spring!

Good mulch,
Bill
 
We have lots of leaves here in Michigan. The most powerful blowers are walk-behind units with the Billy Goat and the Little Wonder being the top ones. To me the Billy Goat offers a very superior aerodynamic design in the impeller and scroll housing. My reservation is that it's made of plastic. Little Wonder is metal and should last longer.

I have a rider with a 44" 3-blade deck and I use the bagger attachment. It does a pretty good job overall but I have so much area that I need a walk-behind to do the areas that I don't want to mow.

I have been looking for a good deal on a walk behind on Craig's List and have missed a few. My ideal purchase will be one with a blown engine. I have a 7.0hp pressure washer that I want to swap the engine back and forth on. I have access to a full machine shop so making adapters is no problem.

Lots of guys have the Trak-Vac units around here. They must be good because I see a lot of them. I don't have the room in my barn to dedicate to that kind of equipment.
 
Slightly different....but does anyone have an easy way to pick-up black walnuts from the lawn? I give my girls $l/ 5 gal pail but its usually me stuck finishing the job!!
 
I have about an acre of lawn around the house with many trees , (several maples ) as well as an old cemetery full of trees next dooer so I know what youre dealing with. I used to cut the leaves up with the lawn mower and use it to blow them in to windrows then rake them onto a tarp to drag to the garden or into the woods. Spent hours every fall doing this.I considered a lawn sweeper, bagger or some other attachment to make this easier. What I settled on was Gator (mulching) blades for my lawn tractor. I run over the leaves with the deck as high as it will go and windrow them like before - then I run through the windrows and grind them up. Then I rake up whats left to put on the garden. The gator blades cut the leaves into little pieces - some stay on the lawn and the volume of what I have to rake up is about 1/10 of what it was . My time spent on this chore is about 1/4 of what it use to be. I still rake the leaves away from the house etc by hand. I bought a leaf blower but havent even used it for the leaves since I bought these gator blades.I imagine they make a Mulching blade for your push mower , it is a cheap solution compared to some of the others.
 
Move everything I can out of the way and let the wind blow them out into the fields.. Except this year has been to wet for the wind to do a good job.
 
I let the wind deposit half in a small area. Then I rake them int a tarp and dump them near a stream. The other half gets mulched in place. One of the lawn fertilizer companies was advertising this year that it is good for your lawn, provided you put their 'Special fertilizer" on too. Of course we know that plain lime will do it at one fifth the cost.
 
once they are bagged-- i put them in the hen house-- great for putting on the garden next spring- so far have 2 feet in house this fall-- rest will stay in old wool sacks until they go to hen house floor. i know the floor is dryer and it smells kinda like tobacco leaves in there now.
 
I can tell you from experience that that claim is hogwash, I have a Billygoat with the 9 horse subaru sitting on the trailer right next to me. I do like the Little Wonder having the steel housing and steel impeller, we have 3 Little Wonders, one with an 8 horse Honda and 2 with the 10 horse Briggs junk. Also have 2 Billy Goats, my steel housing plastic impeller and a newer all plastic blower with the POS Briggs. I do like the plastic BillyGoat but it does not compare to a Little Wonder with a Honda on it. The 8 horse Honda moves more air with the steel impeller than the 10 horse Briggs does with a flexing plastic impeller.
 
Spend the $30 bucks for a mulching kit for the lawn mower. It shreds the leaves into fine particles pushing them into the grass which allows them to break down and rot a lost faster. I did this 6 years ago, i have never raked, or blown a leaf again.
 
Best advice is get a neighbor like mine!
He mounted a TSC lawn vac on his rear mount finish mower and cleans several of neighbors for the mulch - works for me!
 
I'm with jimva. I fabricated a plate to bolt over the discharge on my zero turn, it turns leaves to almost powder in one pass, or two if in heavy leaves.

And it's just plain fun.
 
Has anybody tried hooking up a squirrel cage blower to a bigger engine? They move a tremendous amount of air and are all over the place in older furnaces and AC systems. I’ve had squirrel cage blowers I’ve rigged up that have to be weighted down so they don’t blow themselves across the room. Their quieter too.

John
 
Use to mulch,,, had big problems with tic's... quit mulching and got a pull behind yard sweeper,,, no more tics in the yard,,, I made a circle drive in the edge of the woods,,, dump my load till I fill up the drive and use the tractor to push'em up in a pile deeper in the woods
 
I'd like to see a picture of that.

When you say finish mower, is that a 3 pt mounted? If so, how does he attach the lawn vac to the finish mower?

Thanks.

Christopher
 
Mulching will kill the grass if one does it year after year and does not add Lime. have sold
lawn equipment for 28 years and a unit called Trac-Vac seems to stand up better than anything we have ever sold. See people bu the ag-fab from lowes and in three years they are back wanting a better unit. Usually have to go over my 2 acre yard at least 3 times each year, some trees shed early then some latter.
 
I would think it would clog up and maybe become off balance. I also don't believe they would be safe at the speed required to mulch and vac (my vac impeller runs at engine seep - 3600 rpm). My neighbor built his own using an old snowblower 2nd stage impeller. I won't stand near it and watch it though :)

Good safety,
Bill
 
Contact local golf course that has a driving range they might have an old ball retriever that mounts to golf cart or tractor they would sell.
 
We live in the woods so leaves are a big problem to SWMBO. She blows them into big piles and I mulch them down to dust. Just go slow and set the mower up high. After each pass I lower the mower some until after the third pass its all dust. And its fun. Takes a little time but who cares??? Henry
 
A couple years ago we had about 80 to 100 trees taken down, to remove dangerous and dead trees, open up the place for more sunlight, etc. Since then I've found my leaf problems have pretty much gone away. I'm in a mixed forest area, with maples, cedars, alders and spruce, so it was mostly just maple leaves. But when you get all those big maples shedding leaves and the cedar and spruce shading the leaves all winter, it got to be a real mess. I would either mulch them with a mower if I had a dry spell in the fall (sometimes pushing a huge pile of leaves in front of the mower), or hand rake them or just leave them be and deal with the moss in the spring.
 
A couple years ago we had about 80 to 100 trees taken down, to remove dangerous and dead trees, open up the place for more sunlight, etc. Since then I've found my leaf problems have pretty much gone away. I'm in a mixed forest area, with maples, cedars, alders and spruce, so it was mostly just maple leaves. But when you get all those big maples shedding leaves and the cedar and spruce shading the leaves all winter, it got to be a real mess. I would either mulch them with a mower if I had a dry spell in the fall (sometimes pushing a huge pile of leaves in front of the mower), or hand rake them or just leave them be and deal with the moss in the spring.
 
I give you the Binford 6000 Four Wheel Drive Electric Start Leaf Sucker!

Suck 'em up, which also pulverizes them, then compost 'em.

Made from an old Crapsman walk-behind vac/chipper/bagger, just mounted on a trailer to avoid having to dump the bag every two minutes.
binford3.jpg
 
The town picks them up if you get them to the street. They will compost the leaves & grass clippings. They shred tree limbs and make mulch. You can buy a pickup load for $10.00. I keep a big pile of leaves that I will spread over the garden next Spring and I will mulch them with an old Toro GrassKing and then plow them under. I usually lime the garden every year since I use grass clippings for mulch to keep the weeds down. Hal

http://i
1112u0n.jpg
 
Here"s the business end of one of our vacs. It"s got a 12" hose and 25 hp engine on the other side of that impeller housing. It will easily get your gloves if you"re not careful. It dumps into a tandem trailer. Of course this isn"t just for my house, it"s one of the things we do at our business. We"ve probably run 80 loads through this machine this year and 60 through the other one. It chops the leaves good enough that I mix it with grass clippings, etc. and it composts in a year or so.
leafvac.jpg
 
Get yourself a Little Wonder push blower. I have a 8hp high output, that thing is a life saver on some jobs. If you can find a Stihl BR 400 back pack blower they work great also.
 
Reading over the posts here, it's apparent that a lot of folks don't comprehend what we're up against here. Before coming to Michigan, I spent most of my life on the High Plains where leaves were never much of a problem. Then a few years in North Carolina where mostly you deal with pine needles.

My wife and I bought our place here back in '94. Nine acres where the previous owners had done very little in the way of tree removal. Not much grass to worry about, but that first autumn was a real eye-opener: Ten inches of oak and maple leaves on the ground. We went after them with rakes, but I quickly discovered it takes a LONG time to burn that many leaves. Fortunately we had a couple of sons still at home, but it was a nightmare. My wife says those leaves nearly brought her to tears.

The next year I thought I'd try mulching them. Big disaster. Not only did the oak leaves kill what little grass we had, but the whole next summer we tracked ground up leaves into the house.

Year three I bought the Little Wonder and started blowing the leaves into the woods. Problem solved. We also took out around a hundred big trees, which cut way back on the volume. Now I have to clear leaves from five or six times as much area as when we first moved in (more grass to mow, too), but it's a project I can handle myself in about three weekends. The main thing is to not let the leaves pile too deep.
 
Good choice, they work great. Its funny, when I talk about My Little Wonder, people who dont know what they are look at me like I have 2 heads.lol j
 
I am not too finicky about my grass, it is green most of the time and is a little lumpy from new construction 10 years ago. IF--(and I wont) I were to bag the leaves from just what fell on the grass that I cut, (1/3 of and acre) I would have maybe 30 bags.

I dont bag leaves cause nature takes care of the leaves by having them rot away on top of the existing ground. I just dont like having them sit all winter on the grass and have the grass look worse in the spring. I agree that burning this many leaves would be real stupid, it would take forever.
 
(quoted from post at 02:38:30 11/20/09) I'm with jimva. I fabricated a plate to bolt over the discharge on my zero turn, it turns leaves to almost powder in one pass, or two if in heavy leaves.

And it's just plain fun.
Click to expand...

I tried that today,,, used a old floor board off a ford N as my block off plate,,, dagum,,,, the zero turn did do a nice job,,, better then any other mower I have ever tried to mulch with 8)
 
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