Originally Posted by Triple_Se7en
Originally Posted by Donald
I have done various things with leaves over the years, from bagging while lawn mowing to blowing with a backpack blower to vacuum with a lawn vacuum in an effort to get rid of the leaves.
I am now mulching the leaves specifically to put the nutrients back into the soil, in a similar manner as mulching the grass. Seems a lot easier also.
Anyone else jumping on the trend to help the soil with leaves chopped up into tiny bits?
Depends on the amount of leaves you have. If doing this with a push mower, it makes no sense to mulch leaves that stand taller than the engine of the lawn mower.
We need more info from ya'..... Are you riding or pushing? Your post above says neither, so I stopped reading after you mentioned this.
This. Our front yard has 5 trees (2x 70+ year old ash, 2x 50 year old maples, 1x 50 year old oak). We used to rake and burn, then they outlawed burning. Then I used to rake and bag, one year the total was 170+ garbage bags full of leaves and a lot of work. Then I tried mulching all of it - had a good inch or two of finely ground mulch on the entire lawn (after multiple passes) which basically choked out the grass (I was told that the heavy mulch competes with the grass for nitrogen and you have to really double up on the Fall fertilization). Now I bag maple leaves (because they don't mulch very well, and mulch the ash and oak and still end up with 50 bags or so). I've come to the belief that having lots of trees may be good for the environment, but a major PITA to take care of (especially when your neighbor has multiple trees close to your property).
Another thing about the mulching and mower. My Toro push mower (Super Recycler 2) does a pretty good job of mulching, but sometimes requires a second pass on heavy leaves). My Craftsman 42" lawn tractor with mulching "plug" is garbage for mulching leaves or grass.
