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: