Y'know... f*ck leaves

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, it’s my fault. I was the one that moved to the woods, smack in the middle of the leaf-peeper tourism zone. I was the one that thought that would be cool, being a California kid who once flew over the northeast in October and dislocated his jaw gawping at the endless vista of rolling, red-gold-flame hills.

But I’ve had enough. For our half-acre of lawn (surrounded by said woods) I have a mid-sized lawn tractor and a 48" sweeper. I’ve done two pre-sweeps this fall. So I go out today to do a last blow-sweep to prepare for a final cut and bag of the leaf-ings, and I figure a couple hours.

Six FUCKING hours later, including getting the tractor stuck in a location inaccessible to any help device and getting a rope tangled in the sweeper twice, I have a yard sort of mostly kinda clear of leaves. I still have another blow (-out the corners) and sweep pass to do before I can do that final cleanup mow.

Next relocation, which may be soon, I want someplace where leaves are something the residents go to a museum to see.

2

Sucks that the tractor got stuck, but hey! It’s free compost. Might as well turn a problem into a solution & turn it into amazing garden soil for next year.

3

heh just do what grandpa did and just mow the leaves into mulch and leave it in the grass for next year

And since it usually had a nice snow fall in Indiana every winter no one cared what it looked like for a week or two

although some people didn’t bother raking them using that for an excuse "they just dry out and crumble and then it snows so why bother "

4

My sympathies. I have two well-behaved maples that drop leaves right around Halloween, that’s it.

The views never get old to me though. I found one last week that I’d never noticed, right around the salt marshes of Newburyport MA. Pretty good for November.

5

Or build a BBQ pit and burn the leaves in it?

:stuck_out_tongue:

6

Come to the arid West.

7

Why in God’s name would ANYONE have a half acre of LAWN?

A big patch of grass that does nothing at all, except make you work. Cut the lawn, keep it free of weeds, get the leaves off the lawn… WHY?

All because “that’s how it is supposed to look”. All because that’s what large manors had - manicured gardens with expansive lawns… Guess what? These rich pricks had a gardening team to take care of it. The ONLY thing the lawn was for was to show off how rich they were.

Most of us are not rich. Lawns are a stupid anachronism in which we all pretend to be wealthy land barons.

I’ll make an exception if you are a national class lawn bowling or croquet champion. Otherwise - Jesus Christ, get rid of the useless lawn!

8

These days the green types are saying to leave the leaves for a healthier, greener lawn next year. Of course, these are the same people who tell you to clean everything with lemon juice and give up toilet paper, so YMMV.

9

OP, what happens if you let the leaves stay where they fell?

10

A few years ago, we had a very early hard freeze that caused the pecan trees to drop all their leaves while still “full” I guess is the word. I had drifts of leaves to deal with, first time I’d ever had that mess to deal with. Could be worse, could be pine cones.

11

I just mowed up my leaves yesterday. Now there’s tons of dust and small leaf debris everywhere but maybe I’ll get around to using my blower before it gets too cold. If I don’t mulch up my leaves, they’ll freeze in winter and it makes shoveling snow a real PITA and parts of my lawn is dead by spring. I don’t mind leaves, just waiting for them to all fall so I can mow them which means it’s usually pretty darn cold by then sucks.

12

Did the pecans make it through okay?

I ask because, pecan leaves aren’t delicious, while pecans…

13

It’s funny, we used to not have squirrels and the trees made lots of pecans. Now the squirrels are thick and eat the pecans before they ever get ripe. I haven’t had a harvest in years due to squirrels, but I don’t begrudge the little guys. No pecans this year - a very mild winter and everything bloomed way too early, then a last freeze at about the time a last freeze is supposed to happen.

14

They turn into lefts.

15

The problem here is that there are so many different types of trees. Some lost their leaves weeks ago, while others haven’t dropped any yet. So no matter how often you clear them, there are always new leaves falling. And the constant whining of leaf blowers, all day. Two of my neighbors have OCD, and spend hours every single day blowing their leaves. We just wait until they’ve all fallen (the leaves, not the neighbors), and clear them exactly once.

16

Yeah, lawns. I don’t disagree but for most houses actually separated from other houses, something has to fill the ground area and concrete isn’t always the answer. Let’s see: I have a couple of acres of woods, 0.45 acres of which is listed as “cleared” on the plat. Subtract house, driveway, a small outbuilding and a large landscaped island around some oak trees, and I’d guess maybe a quarter acre all around the house. Only somewhat larger than it needs to be for decent separation between house and trees. In no way resembles an English manor. Also doesn’t get watered.

Some newer areas have vast cleared lawns, an acre or more of blank nothingness. Drives me nuts to see - why in the HELL do you move to the dense northeastern woods only to recreate the upscale end of Levittown?

Leaves are a mix including a lot of oak, which is not nice stuff to leave on the ground; oaks don’t play well with ground plants and cover and tend to kill them off for an area about 25% larger than the crown. So leaving them (which is a huge mess) or mulching them in place isn’t an option.

My neighbor (born up here, shot people for a living in FL, came back to raise his family after being shot himself) had a big burn every fall for the first two years. The extended neighborhood asked him politely to stop with the man-made toxic fog… these leaves are only “dry” by comparison to living ones, and only burn with great clouds of choking smoke.

Got ahead of the whole mess today, will finish up tomorrow, big storms later in the week will wash things nice and clean for winter. But still, fuck leaves.

17

I also have a half acre. One side and all across the back of the houses is mature woods. Plus I have a dozen big trees in the yard, some over 100 feet tall.

Leaves are my hobby.

When I moved here 30 years ago I was young and energetic. “I’ll rake them onto tarps and haul the tarps to the front”. 50 some tarp loads later and the tree lawn looking like a small mountain range of leaves I decided to come up with a better plan for next year.

Being an engineer and machinist I built my own walk behind blower. I designed it quite differently then the ones you can buy. They all use high velocity blowers (which whine like crazy) that have an exit for the air about 5" square. Mine has a high volume blower with an exit 12" x 5". I made a 2 muffler exhaust system, is is very quiet.

It is fierce. It will knock the legs out from under children and terrify small animals. If you dig into the ground, it will peel a strip of turf up and fling it. It works well in my yard because I can just blow towards the one side and the back into the woods (or as my Thai wife calls it, the jungle).

Alas, the knees are too bad to do this anymore. So I just got a tow behind leaf vacuum with a 5hp engine that attaches to the riding mower. It is awesome. It takes longer than my efficient blower, but I can sit down and only have to get up when I dump the leaves. I bought it used from Craigslist and all the best ones at reasonable prices go immediately, so I bought one that uses 2 large trash cans.

I knew it was too small, but I like to build things. I built a galvanized steel top for my 3’ x 4’ yard wagon and transferred the blower to it. It has a volume of a cubic yard (200 gallons in leaf vacuum lingo). I picked up a more flexible 6" hose to go from the mower to the blower inlet.

It works very well. The mower mulches the leaves first, then the blower mulches them again. Taking a hint from my neighbor, I run the mower around the yard first without the vacuum to add another layer of mulching. The leaves are compacted very tightly. The neighbor says the pre mulching cuts the volume at least in half compared to just vacuuming them in the first pass.

Next year I will make the wagon larger and tapered (to slide the compacted bale of leaves out better). Electric start would be great also, these blowers are tough to pull start since they are hooked to the motor with no clutch and operate when you are pulling the motor through.

I looked at a lot of vacs, if you are interested, I like the Cyclone Rake. Nice design that folds up and can be hung on the wall after you are done. If you are gettijng by with one of those sweepers now with no shredding and compacting, this is the ticket.

Dennis

18

I feel your pain. I leaf-blow 4 times, if I don’t, the leaves are too heavy to blow. Each time is at least 5 hours of torture. We have a huge yard and it’s surrounded on all sides by enormous maple trees. People think blowing leaves is easy, oh no, it’s very tiring, and my arm is so sore the next day, I can barely life it.

This year we had the added bonus of millions of samaras. So under the layer of leaves was a heavy layer of samaras that had to be moved too.

Also, the conditions for blowing have to be just right. It has to have been dry for several days prior to blowing. There has to be almost no wind, wind toward my face makes the job nearly impossible. When all the conditions are right and the wind is at your back, it can be almost enjoyable, almost.

19

I used to mow an entire acre with a push mower. But I was only 46 then. Sold it and have a much smaller yard now.
I have a large pecan tree and usually mow late in Nov one more time to mulch it al

20

For me, that means having to deal with wet, mushy leaves in the Spring, that are many times harder to move. Then I have to take care of them, before I can get to the fun gardening stuff.