Sounds like another immigrant from Florida or SoCal.

The oaks are the second and last wave of trees to color and drop leaves in the fall. Fall only happens once a year and by mid December you should be done with leaves.

Until spring that is.

If you have any oaks that hold their leaves through winter, and many of them do and also American Beech does it, then you will have the pleasure of raking up those leave in the spring time. Then that's it for spring.

Until summer that is.

In summer there may be a drought which can cause trees to drop a lot of leaves. But that's not usually much of a problem for lawns.

I rake up the leaves with a manual rake but only because I enjoy it and also because I cannot stand the noise of a blower. I may wind up getting a blower anyway because a neighbor has one of those awful willow oaks which has very narrow leaves which fall into the grass and very difficult to rake up.

I have the same trees as you do, so I sympathize with the problem.

You can go several days without raking - it really won't hurt the seedlings. You're better off using a blower. Less work and less damage to seeds.

Only real issue is rain. Don't let the leaves pile up if you know rain is on the way, especially if it going to rain for several days. The leaves can get forced down into the grass and it will be a pain to try to get them out. If you don't the smothered grass (seedings and mature) wiil die off.

Capt Tom

Sounds like another immigrant from Florida

Yup.
It's a whole 'nother world up here.

I don't mind raking... some. But I have a lot of lawn. I rake during the day, the hub rakes when he gets home, and on the weekends we do everything all over again. I have worked and watered so long to get this grass going that I don't want anything to damage it.

I guess if it were easy everyone would have perfect lawns.

thanks

LAst year I didn't even have to rake. The leaves dropped and a wind storm blew through and made the leaves disappear. We don't have mature trees in our subdivision though so it's not generally that bad. I have to rake up some of the neighbors yards because it's from my trees and I don't want them to complain. I'm from Florida so I like having the leaves and raking and being outdoors when it's cool out.

I have not had to do much raking the last few years as my mulching mower turns the leaves into dust and little tiny bits of leaf. Its great for the soil and saves alot of time.

Oh, we've mulch mowed all right.

And still have two new feet of leaves everyday. There's a limit to how deep a layer a newly established lawn can take, no matter how small the pieces are :)

Get a compost bin and start composting that stuff.

I am already composting, you bet!

Here's the deal. You can go with me if you like, and you can refuse to go with me, if you like.

Sharpen the blade. Roll the mower over, or remove the mower deck, and sharpen the blade. If you have no grinder on a bench, take it up to the hardware store, and have them sharpen the blade. It should be done in a day, if they are lazy. If they are not lazy, they will tell you to wait, and it will be done in an hour.

Sharpen the blade(s).

Now that we have a very sharp blade, just mow. That blade, since you sharpened it, will turn leaves into pieces the size of dimes (the ten cent coins). If you did not sharpen the blade, mowing will turn the leaves into pieces the size of, well, half leaves. It's not nearly as good.

After you have mowed, no matter what size stuff you have mulched into the lawn, spray it with beer. Yup, fill the hose end sprayer with beer, and spray everything. That sugar, and those enzymes, will rot (I'm sorry, I meant to say 'naturally decompose') those leaf pieces in nothing flat. And everything will look gorgeous. And the lawn will love you for it.

Hey, Files, I did everything you suggested, except, hey, man, I didn't actually get around to having the time to actually sharpen the blade.......things aren't working, like you suggested they might work. Any ideas?

Nope. Haven't a clue.

Sharpen the blade, eh?

I use a reel mower normally so leaves don't get shredded. Most of them come out in one piece or sometimes 2 or three. Definitely not dime sized but maybe the OP can make use of that advice.

Boy, am I ever glad to see the posters all here do rake up their leaves so energetically.
In other forums the advice can be often seen to suggest that leaves can be left where they lie and wont harm the grass any. They sure can though.

Oak leaves especially are a pain maybe to rake more on a continuous basis, but because of their make-up...they have a waxy coating that makes them not a good thing for the lawn.
Even chewing them up with a lawn mower can be difficult if they have been wetted by a rain. If put into a compost, they should be chewed up good, otherwise, they wont break down as other leaves do.

Oak leaves, because of this coating on them, are ideal insulators when used around hydrangea--those that need to have their shoots come through winter for spring bloom.
Other leaves mat down, absorb moisture; oak leaves tend to not absorb moisture this way.

Blade is sharp- I'm a nut about that.

I'm mulch mowing in as much as I am comfortable with, using more to mulch larger unplanted areas, and composting the rest.
I really don't care how long it takes them to break down in the compost- I do cold (lazy) compost piles and when one is full we just fence off another square and start another bunch.

I'm doing fine.
It's just that it is my first leaf season ever, and between the number of oaks I have and the size of the lawn I was a bit overwhelmed at the sheer quantities of leaves.

I was mainly just curious as to how often I needed to clear the lawn- daily, every other day, weekly, what?

And thank you for reminding me philes21- I've been meaning to beer the lawn for a while now.

You're welcome.....and don't forget the professional ratio.....one for the lawn, one for you. One for the lawn, one for you.....etc.

Let us know how you're making out. We'll all help, where ever we can.

I would not leave the leaves sitting in *one* spot on the turf (where no grass is exposed) no more than three days.

Of course, the wind will keep them moving and play a factor in where they accumulate the most.

philes, I think I forgot the ratio. I thought it was one for the grass...two for me...one for the grass...three for me...etc :) ;)

I'm skeptical about the value of spraying diluted beer on a lawn. Beer is mostly water to start, and if you put it in a hose end sprayer, you're further diluting it.

There would be little sugar being added to the lawn, and sugar is high carbon (no nitrogen) anyway, so it wouldn't help the leaves decompose.

The enzymes used in the brewing process convert more complex starches into simpler sugars, but they're mostly active at temperatures above 120 F.

If you've had good results from spraying diluted beer on your lawn, you should continue to do so, but I doubt if the results come from the sugar and enzymes.

I think you'd have better results spraying beer on the lawn if you drank the beer first.

All the above advice is correct. I can only offer you encouragement on a long term basis. I grew up in 6b conditions, but I didn't know what leaves were until I moved to this 2/3 acre with 10 oak trees. My street is wooded with oaks, hickory, and tupelo.

At present I live in sort of an ongoing science project about how to deal with leaves. The neighbors to the left rake furiously in the evenings and weekend and bag everything. Through the fall months, they put out at least 10 bags of leaves a week, every week, for the collection truck. They fertilize their lawn spring, summer, and fall plus overseeding the bare patches every year. Fortunately, they have two young teenagers who are so far surprisingly cooperative about yard work.

To the right, the new neighbor put in only one day of fall cleanup the first year and afterwards turned the problem over to a lawn service. The lawn service showed up in early December with men, trucks, blowers, mowers, etc. and worked all day and into the dark. And into the next day -- all of the next day. That was the first year. The lawn service now schedules 3 leaf cleanup days -- Oct., Nov. , and Dec. --for that yard. They haul away a huge truckload of leaf debris each time. They also do the lawn fertilizing, reseeding etc. and work on the bare patches.

In the middle, we do as you are doing. We rake, blow, mow, mulch mow, run the yard vacuum, fill the compost pile, heap shredded leaves on the garden beds, etc. Managing a lot of leaves is a big job, no matter how you do it.

But...here's the benefit of doing it the way you are doing it. There is a gradual improvement of your soil and your garden beds over the entire yard as a result of the organic input from the leaf process. You can experiment with how much lime or other amendments you might want to add, but you won't need as much of anything as you would if you were just getting rid of all the leaves. Grass just plain grows better in deeper, looser soil, as do shrubs and perennials. My neighbor asks me what I put on my bare patches. Actually, at this point there aren't any. Even after drought, the lawn tends to come back. We give it alfalfa pellets in the spring and that's all. Not a showplace lawn, but a practical

I guess there is a second benefit from coping with the leaves the way you are doing it. You may find that you are developing a more optimistic outlook about the whole process by thinking of the leaves as a garden resource rather than as an endless cleanup problem.

That sounds like alot of leaves. My brother has a unit that he pulls behind his tractor that sucks up the leaves and chops them up. Don't know if you have a tractor but if you are interested in such a unit I can find out what he has for you. It does a great job even pulls up wet leaves, acorns, twigs and pretty much anything else that is lying on the ground.

A yard vacuum is out of the question right now cost wise.
Raking leaves is great aerobic exercise anyway, and we enjoy doing it.
I was just surprised at the amout of leaves, that's all. My backlot neighbor does not rake and his are nearly to the top of his fence right now- I'll try and get a pic later today. It's pretty amazing.

I think if your tree drops leaves onto his property, he has to rake them up. You don't have to do it for him. Think if it was a fruit tree. You wouldn't be able to go onto his property to pick the fruit. Mind you, he can cut branches off your tree that hang over on his side.

???

That was never at issue??