Leaves on the lawn - rake, gas blower, battery blower, pay some one or power mulching ? Let them be?

I run the mower over them to collect them up and then they go for composting. The arrangement of my garden on a sloping site means I have almost endless capacity for composting behind my shrubs. After doing this for 31 years It's beginning to help level the slope.
 
I'm leaving them as long as it's not somewhere it will blow into someone else's property or into the road. I've been doing a bit more of a hands off approach to lawn care all year and I've had more bumble bees and our flowers have looked a lot healthier, so I figured I'd see if that makes any difference for next year. I would usually use the mower to bag them in previous years.
 
I mulch them. In fact I mulch my lawn year round. A set of Gatorback blades makes short work of both leaves and grass. Depending on the weather sometimes I am mulching leaves into January.
 
I mulch the front yard where there's not many leaves. In the back I'm surrounded by live oaks and water oaks. I will use my backpack blower to blow these back into the woods. There's just too many leaves to effectively mulch them down even with my Scag zero turn.
 
Depends on the tree and yard. My yard DELIBERATELY has no tree left whose leaves won't disintegrate on contact with a mower blade. Maple, poplar, hickory, pecan, etc. My mom has big swamp white oak that even if the leaves are chopped the pieces choke the grass. We rake and leaf blow the leaves onto a tarp and drag them into the woods.
 
Mulch them up with the mower and let nature handle the rest. Seems to help the grass grow a bit better assuming you don’t leave any big piles to smother the grass.
 
Rake the majority onto a large tarp and deposit them on the curb. City will then vacuum them up at no charge. The remainer I mulch with a lawnmower. Two runs and I am done. Clean lawn for the winter.
 
This thread reminds me of when my wife asked me, ok to pour boiling water to deice the windshield?

I guess one could do nothing and just hope the leaves blow onto others' lawns. What's amazing, is, many do consider that an option and they do just that.

My routine is I rake to the sidewalk and the town collects them 2X per season. I see people using blowers and they blow them onto the street, which has caused accidents.
 
I just mulch them with my Wright stander mower that has a mulch deck kit and wavy mulching blades...turns them to dust.
 
My neighbor has a large Sycamore tree just across the property line in the front yard . If you hold your hand open with your fingers widely extended , that's the size of the leaves . The neighbor is on my west side so that means the prevailing winds carry all of his leaves over into my yard and eventually on to my front porch . I usually crank up the ZTR mower and mulch them up at least once a week if not more . This week I even went onto his side of the property line and mulched some of them before they had a chance to blow across .
 
Gator G5 blades were a game changer for my leaf issues, we have a cabin that is pretty heavily canopied with a mix of oak and elm trees and about 1.5 acres. Some places the leaves are 6+ inches deep and 2-3 passes with the zero turn and they are pretty well broken down and settled below the grass. By spring they've broken down to the point where you can only see residue in areas that had the heavy leaf deposits and those are gone after the first spring mow. I just do a lap with the leaf blower to blow all the leaves out to areas that I can hit em with the mower and go to town, we used to rake and it would take 2 weekends to get everything cleaned up, now it's an afternoon and it's done.
 
The wife bags the leaves that pile up around the house but the rest of the yards leaves will get mowed over come spring time.
 
Did my last mow last week and then I put up a leaf fence. The leaves come from the south all winter long with the big winds. So I use some green plastic fence on the south side of the property. This either traps them or sends them on their way. But otherwise my big lot would fill up with leaves over the winter. Haven't had any big blows yet this year though.
 
SHOZ said:
Did my last mow last week and then I put up a leaf fence. The leaves come from the south all winter long with the big winds. So I use some green plastic fence on the south side of the property. This either traps them or sends them on their way. But otherwise my big lot would fill up with leaves over the winter. Haven't had any big blows yet this year though.
Click to expand...
Last week!?

I've been plowing snow for 2 months!
 
in previous years I have mulched my leaves and then aerated to allow the soil to accept the nutrients. This year I bought a bagger for my mower so I bagged. I had already put enough work into my yard leveling it in September.

Just my $0.02
 
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