What's the laziest way to get leaves off a lawn?

[Deeg]

At lunch today we were discussing different ways to clear leaves off a lawn.

Assume for this discussion that:
1) You can't cut the trees down.
2) You have to remove the leaves on the yard/lawn.

Here were some suggestions:

• Print a unique number on every leaf, then hold a raffle. Winner gets $100, tickets are free--players just need to pick up the tickets themselves.
• Hang nets under the trees that catch the leaves. The nets funnel the leaves into a compost area. My co-worker who came up with this wants to patent the idea as "tree diapers".
• Build a geodesic dome over the lawn. Leaves fall on the neighbors' lawn.
• Advertise "Pick your own compost! Free!" on Craigslist. "We'll supply the rakes! Just bring your own bags."

Any other good suggestions?

[runner pat]

Do nothing. The leaves will rot.

[Tripler]

1) Wait until all the leaves fall all across the yard.
2) Apply Zippo lighter to yard.
3) Grab marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers 'n' enjoy the fun!

Tripler
Yay! Smores! ::cough cough::

[AClockworkMelon]

Get a rake and rake all the leaves into big piles. Then pick up the leaves and put them into a trash bag. Take the bag to the corner for garbage pickup.

[runner pat]

Originally Posted by Tripler

1) Wait until all the leaves fall all across the yard.
2) Apply Zippo lighter to yard.
3) Grab marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers 'n' enjoy the fun!

Tripler
Yay! Smores! ::cough cough::

That was disappointing. No explosives.

[Suburban Plankton]

Pay the kid next door 5 bucks, sit back, and have a beer.

[sitchensis]

Lawn mower, you have to do it anyway

[Tripler]

Originally Posted by runner pat

That was disappointing. No explosives.

Yeah but with a brick 'o' C-4, yer just gonna blow the leaves to the outer perimeter of your lawn, and even then, probably just shred the stuff in the middle to leafy-bits.

In this case, I recommend deflagration, not detonation.

Tripler
Only a recommendation. YMMV.

[The Second Stone]

I live in Antioch, CA and the wind is very brisk. I only have to vacuum once a fall. I suppose putting down fish netting on the lawn to be rolled up later would preserve the lawn and my labor.

[alphaboi867]

Set fire to the lawn.

[EvilTOJ]

Move to Australia, or some other southern hemisphere country. It's springtime there, enjoy the blooms!

[Richard Pearse]

Originally Posted by Deeg

• Print a unique number on every leaf, then hold a raffle. Winner gets $100, tickets are free--players just need to pick up the tickets themselves.

This is great, though while you're busy printing numbers on the leaves you could just put them in the rubbish instead of back on the lawn. Alternately avoid the printing altogether and just pay someone $100 to rake them up.

[Nancarrow]

Originally Posted by Deeg

Print a unique number on every leaf...

Laziness... u r doin it rong.


Hijack: have we been able to do bullet-point lists all this time? Well fuck me. Testing... to-do-list for today

• Put some pants on
• Go to the shop, buy some prunes and Panadol*
• Hi, Opal

Groovy

[sevenwood]

Originally Posted by sitchensis

Lawn mower, you have to do it anyway

That's what I do. I set the mower to "mulch" and mow away. Given that mulched leaves tend to be acidic, I have the "truegreen" folks put down an application of lime each year to counteract that effect.

[Surly Chick]

I just wait for them to blow away.

[Kyla]

Building a geodesic dome is lazy? Jesus, I must be a freaking slug by your standards.

[KRC]

I second what Surly Chick said--wait for the wind to blow. In Albuquerque, the wind blows about 360 days a year, and if it can remove your lawn furniture and your garbage can, it will also take the leaves.

[Alpha Twit]

Buy a couple of goats. They'll eat everything in sight. Then you eat the goats. That way you're not lazy, you're just recycling the useless bio-mass into tasty tasty protein.

[elbows]

Electric lawn mower with bagger. Works like a vacuum on leaves!

I miss my old one. It was awesome, just empty the bag into yard waste bags. A snap.

Now I have a stupid gas mower, harrumph.

[Jackmannii]

We use a mulching mower. If you have a lot of leaves you have to keep at the mowing for a few weeks, but you wind up with lots of finely shredded leaf fragments which look OK and are great for the soil as they decompose. The only downside is that there are no leaf piles for you and the dog to leap into.

I always save a few bags of leaves to make mulch with.

[Polycarp]

Wait for the landlady to decide it needs doing and hire somebody to rake 'em.

[Boyo Jim]

I'll go with flame thrower for 500, Alex.

[salinqmind]

The lawn n' garden guy on his radio show advised last October, "leave 'em on the lawn, they provide important nutrients!" April comes, and what does he say? "Get out there when the weather dries up, lift the flat slabs of dead leaves off your lawn with a rake or pitchfork, or they'll ruin it!" Well, which is it? Rake? Not Rake?

Can alway hope it'll start snowing the day after Halloween, a not unusual occurrence.

[Enuma Elish]

1) Sit on a lawn chair in the middle of your yard.
2) Start talking about how Bret Favre is the greatest quarterback of all time.

after about an hour

3) The leaves will leave of their own volition.

[audit1]

Get one 747-400. Park at edge of lawn. Start engines. No leaves

[gonzomax]

Originally Posted by runner pat

Do nothing. The leaves will rot.

And you can declare it fertilizer.

[NinjaChick]

Inspired by a true story:
Step one: obtain leaf blower.
Step two: blow leaves into neighbor's yard.

ETA: If you try this, your neighbor may retaliate in kind and you'll end up with two yards worth of leaves to clean up. (But the lingering guilt apparently got said neighbor to use his snowblower to clear my parent's sidewalk and driveway that winter!)

[dzero]

Originally Posted by runner pat

Do nothing. The leaves will rot.

Or, to paraphrase, just leave them alone.

[It's Not Rocket Surgery!]

Move.

[panache45]

Originally Posted by sitchensis

Lawn mower, you have to do it anyway

That's what I do. And my mower turns it all into mulch. Win-win.

[Uosdwis R. Dewoh]

Have your SO do it.

Originally Posted by audit1

Get one 747-400. Park at edge of lawn. Start engines. No leaves

No house either.

[Sunspace]

1. Acquire mineral rights to your land.
2. Discover diamonds.
3. Lease mining rights to DeBeers or BHP.
4. Observe conversion of property to open-pit mine.
5. Rake in profits, not leaves.

[Bayesian Empirimancer]

Build a moat around the property. Filled with Lava. At least the home owners association will be more inclined to comment on the moat than the leaves.

[Boyo Jim]

There's a lot of great ideas here, but most don't fulfill the prime directive -- laziness. I would just LOVE a lava filled moat, but it seems on first glance to be a whole lot of work.

[CrazyCatLady]

Originally Posted by salinqmind

The lawn n' garden guy on his radio show advised last October, "leave 'em on the lawn, they provide important nutrients!" April comes, and what does he say? "Get out there when the weather dries up, lift the flat slabs of dead leaves off your lawn with a rake or pitchfork, or they'll ruin it!" Well, which is it? Rake? Not Rake?

Can alway hope it'll start snowing the day after Halloween, a not unusual occurrence.

Well, if you have enough leaves that you can lift a flat slab of them with a pitchfork, you need to cut them up before you leave them on the lawn; that thick a leaf cover is going to smother out your grass. A thinner layer of leaves is fine to just leave, though it looks nicer raked or mowed or whatever.

[Deeg]

Originally Posted by audit1

Get one 747-400. Park at edge of lawn. Start engines. No leaves

I like the way you think! Nothing says lazy better than turning on 50,000 pounds of thrust to blow away leaves.

Here are some more ideas from my co-workers:

• Install a large hadron collider under the lawn and create miniature black holes to suck up the leaves before they wink out of existence. Mind the dog!
• Dig a bottomless pit that takes up your whole yard. Leaves fall in and never come out.
• Throw a large party. Revelers pick up leaves as party favors on their way out.
• Genetically alter the trees to not drop leaves.

[elbows]

Find a 12yr old, offer him $20 to do the job.

Realistically, he's unlikely to do a really terrific job for $20. All you have to do is tidy up what he missed and you're done and look like a hero!

$20? Definitely worth it.

[Boyo Jim]

Important questions:

Do you, the home owner, need to survive the leaf removal process?

Does the home need to survive the leaf removal process?

Does the yard need to survive the leaf removal process?

Does your neighborhood need to survive the leaf removal process?

Does Earth need to survive the leaf removal process?

I cannot propose the most efficient means without answers to these questions.

[dzeiger]

Originally Posted by Richard Pearse

This is great, though while you're busy printing numbers on the leaves you could just put them in the rubbish instead of back on the lawn. Alternately avoid the printing altogether and just pay someone $100 to rake them up.

Put a sign up saying $100 to whoever finds the leaf with the gold star, but leaves must be disposed of when they are picked up and looked at.

After all the leaves have been thrown away with no star found, act surprised, declare that the star must have fallen off or not been noticed, and just split the $100 between whoever's left.

[42fish]

Originally Posted by Deeg

• Install a large hadron collider under the lawn and create miniature black holes to suck up the leaves before they wink out of existence. Mind the dog!
  

Surely the real danger is to the cat: it could end up half-live and half-dead.

Other possibilities:

-Coat lawn with Teflon, let leaves slip off lawn.

-Ignore leaves until you can't stand it no more. Then sell house, buy new one (with clear lawns). Repeat as needed.

[kayaker]

Yesterday I drove around on the lawn tractor and chopped up/bagged leaves which we need as a mulch for the flower beds, etc.

[lieu]

Roll one up, smoke it, start gigglin' like a loon and tell the neighbors to stay the hell out of your stash.

[dzero]

There must be genetically modified bacteria that have a taste for dead leaves. If not, build your own. Then set it loose on the lawn. Of course some of the DNA from the bacteria will probably mutate and find it's way into other organisms. If any of those are human parasites, like ticks for instance, then they will probably pass the mutant DNA on to humans and thus initiate the zombie apocalypse. But WTF, at that point the leaves will be the least of your concerns.

[palindromemordnilap]

I have a fenced back yard with no trees but the neighbors' trees shed leaves into my yard. Yet I never have to rake a leaf--they all disappear to the same place.

My house is a split-level and there is a concrete stairwell to the lower level. I have blocked that door and don't use the stairwell. Every leaf that lands in my back yard eventually gets blown into the stairwell* and never gets back out. All I have to do is wait until the end of the season (or the spring) and clean out the stairwell.

* Except for leaves that get caught on the fence or in the flowerbeds.

[kaylasdad99]

Originally Posted by lieu

Roll one up, smoke it, start gigglin' like a loon and tell the neighbors to stay the hell out of your stash.

Win.

Suddenly, I don't like my solution of redefining them as "mulch" quite so much as I did before.