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Have you ever tried mowing your leaves ?

Stephen J

Stephen J

Suum Cuique
I have two rather large Maple trees in my front yard,and another in the back.They drop enough leaves to fill up my gutters, and cover mine and the neighbors' yards'. This year,thanks to the wind,most were in my yard and a few in one neighbors.
Yesterday I decided I was gonna mow them...:thmbsp: it worked great ! in two hours,I did my front yard and the neighbors front yard as well.I ended up with 4 1/2 lawn bags of leaves. I've lived here most of my life,and can tell you from experience,my lawn alone is usually 4 hours or better and,at least 12 bags.
Now obviously it doesn't get 100 % of the leaf matter,I'd guess around 90 %.
Call the rest mulch ! :D after that,my usual spring raking,and two or three lawn cuttings and it'll be gone. I'm a natural lawn type of guy anyway. I choose not to add to all the chemical runoff into Lake St.Clair.Anyway,I can't say as though I've seen this practiced a lot.While I was doing it yesterday I wondered why.....:dunno:
 
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always....if you've ever had one of those electric mowers on which the handle swings and you can push from either side...these are ingenious when used properly...keep the chute always pointed in the same direction and not only does it keep you from mowing over the cord,you barely have to rake anything...grass or leaves.
 
Everything gets mowed here and we rotate 7 large compost bins. All prunings, palm fronds, finished veges. Everything. We mix in some torn newspaper if the mix is a bit wet. Three months later it's on the garden beds adding nutrient and retaining water. Last thing I'm going to do is pay money for mulch when we have a never ending supply.
 
Been doing it for years. We used to have a huge maple in the back yard. When it was cut down, they measured 60" across the stump! My neighbor bitched every year about how many bags of leaves he had raked. All that time I was mowing. Mulching in the back worked unless they got too deep, but we bagged the front to keep the debris from being tracked inside. I would like to report the mulch was beneficial to the lawn, but with that tree in the back, there was not much lawn.
 
bhundu said:
Everything gets mowed here and we rotate 7 large compost bins. All prunings, palm fronds, finished veges. Everything. We mix in some torn newspaper if the mix is a bit wet. Three months later it's on the garden beds adding nutrient and retaining water. Last thing I'm going to do is pay money for mulch when we have a never ending supply.
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:yes: We call it "Black Gold".


Steve
 
I have huge Oaks here at home and at a small vacation home. I've been mulching leaves into the lawn for years. It helps to have mowers with large engines.

Next year I'm going to try to mow the leaves a first time without the pick-up bag to mulch and then reduce the height of the mower and mow again with the pick-up bag to suck up the shredded leaves. Lately, I've been depositing the shredded leaves in the planting beds located around the foundation of the house to increase the pitch away from the foundation.

I used to just mulch the leaves into my lawn (mow without the pick-up bag). However, my front yard is higher than the beds in front of the house and water now collects there. This seems to be getting worse as the level of the front yard slowly increase from the mulching. For the last several years, I've been picking up my grass clippings and leaves to compost and deposit in low areas. A more permanent drainage fix will be required to provide a route for drainage away from the foundation, though.
 
After raking and bagging up 40+ lawn and leaf bags full a few years ago, I began raking everything out of and away from the flower bed and just let the riding lawn mower do the rest. Besides, doing so gives your lawn nutrients, doesn't it?
 
I've tried but with limited success. I think just too many leaves in some places for it to work effectively with my mower.
 
By the time leaves drop around here, I'm sick of mowing!
I've never understood why people rake and stack up 15-20 lawn-leaf bags at their curb only to find their yard full of leaves the very next day (!)
I have more than a few flower beds on the property and in the fall I let the leaves fall where they may and most of them fall in the flower beds. Nature's "winter blanket" I call them. Any leaves that remain til spring, they get mowed then!
 
bhundu said:
....We mix in some torn newspaper if the mix is a bit wet. Three months later it's on the garden beds....
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Just my humble opinion...but I would not allow decomposed newspaper in the soil where I grow food for myself or family.

Quite a while back while researching PCBs I learned that newspaper ink contained PCBs. Whether the ink still contains them I do not know. Regardless, I would bet that there are man made chemicals in newspaper ink that I would not want to ingest.
 
My old school mowing sense says to cast the waste over the lawn (no bag/catcher) every three/four cuts or so. Too much and it can choke the growth, so mostly it should be bagged/caught. A section of our lawn is in our avatar. Spiking, feeding, top dressing and leveling will be a better option. I grew up working on turf farms.

Those leaves will be great mowed up and mixed in with the wet green waste plus a bit of manure. The key to the best compost is the balance of dry and wet plus regular airation, a starter (old compost), manure and water. I always make sure I piss in the compost bins. Just try not to hose down the worms.

Ten years of using this "green recycle" method has lead to a lush garden without any chemical use. Diversity helps and the insects are our little vege garden helpers. We have broc down at the moment and Mr Cabbage Moth loves to lay eggs on the new shoots and leaves. That's OK as we have Mr Mud Dauber Wasp searching those shoots and leaves everyday for more "baby food presents". A couple of times this season I thought moth may be winning. I get in there and lent a hand and flicked them off into the lawn for Mr Green Ant. Mr Skink looks after things until Mr Butcherbird has a few youngin's. Everyone goes quiet however if Mr Hawk is in the sky.

Meanwhile Apple still bumbles around. Takes a sniff at a native bee, chases Mr Skink with very limited success, and gets bitten by Mr Green Ant every now and again and immediatly comes to her Mummy or Daddy for simpathy.

Fruit flys hover 3m-4m above the ground and are very skittish. Swifts are on the wing and HIGH up, maybe 80m dodging and catching. Orion is in the Eastern sky at night and Venus is the brightest thing in the sky.

Oh. We cut down our prunnings to <15cm lengths so the mower can handle it. Anything above 20mm thick gets hand sawn, dried and burned a year later for potash. Again it's mixed in the compost or used seperatly.

As Westy said it is "black gold". There wouldn't be a cup full of soil here that doesn't have at least one big fat wormie in there!
 
Yeah and remember

roger2 said:
Just my humble opinion...but I would not allow decomposed newspaper in the soil where I grow food for myself or family.

Quite a while back while researching PCBs I learned that newspaper ink contained PCBs. Whether the ink still contains them I do not know. Regardless, I would bet that there are man made chemicals in newspaper ink that I would not want to ingest.
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when that stuff used to come off on your hands and fingers when you read the paper?
 
roger2 said:
Just my humble opinion...but I would not allow decomposed newspaper in the soil where I grow food for myself or family.

Quite a while back while researching PCBs I learned that newspaper ink contained PCBs. Whether the ink still contains them I do not know. Regardless, I would bet that there are man made chemicals in newspaper ink that I would not want to ingest.
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Very valid, but I still reckon I got more control over my own vege garden
 
bhundu said:
Those leaves will be great mowed up and mixed in with the wet green waste plus a bit of manure. The key to the best compost is the balance of dry and wet plus regular airation, a starter (old compost), manure and water. I always make sure I piss in the compost bins. Just try not to hose down the worms.
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I use expired fruit from two farmers markets for the moisture content. The worms and critters love it.


Steve
 
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