I sympathize.

The problem with significant leaf fall of large slowly decomposing leaves like oaks, and trees close to house, in my case anyway, is that they accumulate against walls of house, on pathways, collect on big wads in shrubs. And I do try to grow some plant life that gets smothered ( again due to wind and such creating drifts). So yes, leaves are nature’s mulch, but nature does not care how the plant life evolves in response over years.

I do use 3 bins and fill them to cold- compost as much as I can—more when I can shred a bunch, which takes up less room, plus I will mulch with freshly shredded leaves as well as what breaks down later in bin. But this is Work that either I have to do, or would have to hire a higher- level “ gardener” to do—Mow& Blow doesn’t do that. I can’t shred via lawnmower because my property is so sloped & rocky, so only small patch of lawn in front. I do save the bags of material from the Mow& Blow and during fall contains leaves+ grass. I think heavier bark mulches, pine bark even, stand up to blowing ok though it depends on blower power & skill of user. I am less focused on eradicating blowers since I just don’t see that going anywhere, for me or for people who can’t rake nor afford the hourly rate of a gardener or handle the amount of leaves produced on their property. Though some people might find person that fits.

Then, the leaves supposedly go to city composting center.

What I try to do is use as much as I can for mulch& top- dressing & soil amendments, to buy less products. I have “ wilder” areas of yard where I can let them accumulate, in some gullies and a few areas of closely spaced trees away from the house.

Thanks, Jay! my husband of 56 years likes to see everything neat and tidy for the winter -- the mother who raised him had neat and tidy down to a science (you could eat off her impeccably clean floors any day of any week without giving her notice of your arrival). Too depressing. I totally agree with what you said above, and am going to put it into action more than I have been doing. But -- exactly how do you remove all your oak leaves from the beds and lawns???

The property is surrounded by mature oaks. And I am far too physically challenged to do much of it myself, and DH cannot. I did buy myself a leaf-shredding machine recently, and am waiting with anticipation for this year's leaf-fall. Oak leaves take so long to decompose and would smother the beds, so I figure shredding them will hasten the process. We shall see.

But I still am in a quandary as to how best to get them off without ending up in the hospital!! I rather doubt that my yard man will agree to raking, lol.

le sigh.

Mamiegard -- my situation is much like yours, altho my yard does not slope much. The leaves do gather in awkward locations. I do so wish I could find a "higher-level gardener"!!! I have a very helpful person (my mail carrier) who does a vast amount of weeding, but she has limited knowledge of plants. Yet I am grateful for what she does do for me.

Having a couple of acres of woods surrounding the property means that the blown leaves do end up in the woods -- I shall have to see if I can get out there after so many years of the method of blowing them into those woods to see if I could gather any good stuff that has composted. Won't that be fun (!?!) to battle the vernal swamp water/mud, mosquito and tick populations, the occasional coyote or bear, etc. etc. I can hardly wait!

roxanna, I say let the blowers use their machines if it is not removing mulch. Raking would still remove mulch, actually more so with some of my areas that were mulched with nuggets- they don’t blow away much but DO rake away. Since yard blower crews do have to blow the leaves into piles, if you have bins you might be able to get them to fill some. I don’t know. But, it’s still work do get compost out of bins.

I don’t have any experience with cocoa hulls. Are they blowing away with blowers, or not ? I have to do a fair amount of raking because of STICKS. My trees spew out sticks , and not little short nicely- behaved sticks, but ones that tangle up so you actually can’t just blow the enmeshed leaves.

!00% with Jay on this. I leave our leaves. Actually saw a few fireflies the last couple of years.

I blow or rake the leaves off paths and grass into the beds.

I don't leave whole leaves in the beds, but I do rake and shred my leaves and mulch in fall and in spring with shredded leaves.

For about 25 years I raked the property - it was a huge job. About 9/10ths of an acre, 50 mature oaks plus a maple or two and other smaller trees, plus whatever the wind deposited. And oak leaves fall very late. This was a job that started in October and went well into December. A rake, a bag, and a leaf shredder. Needless to say I didn't always finish the job.

Then when my husband lost his job and was actually home with us, he bought a mowing tractor. MUCH easier since he just mows up and shreds the leaves with that, but honestly my little shredder did a much better job. For a few years I would still go out and rake and shred - I love being outside in the fall, and I liked having my finely-shredded leaves. Now I leave most of it to him, although I will rake out the beds. If I rake lightly enough I can still leave some of the shredded mulch in the beds, although I don't worry too much as I usually put more down in the fall. Shredded leaf mulch seems to decompose quickly so I usually need two applications a year.

I have used cocoa hulls in the past and I just raked lightly to get the whole leaves out of the beds, as I do now with the shredded leaf mulch. I found that by fall the cocoa hulls were often somewhat firmly entrenched as mulch lol - not as light and fluffy as when first put down in spring. I use the smaller rakes with the metal tines, not those huge, plastic, unyielding lawn rakes. I have more dexterity and control with the metal tines.

As I mentioned before, if you have a guy there to blow the leaves, just have him blow them into a pile where it is convenient for you to shred them. And honestly if you don't get to shred all of them, you can always do it in spring, (I am always going into the woods to rake leaves back out in spring to be shredded!)) or maybe you will even have some nice composted stuff underneath to use.

I don't have an answer as to how to keep the blower from removing the cocoa hulls. Perhaps you can just rake out the beds, leave the piles for the blower, and show him where to deposit them.

Good luck!

:)

Dee

Roxanna, when we are young, we can do a lot of gardening and try to make our gardens look like they belong in a magazine. [g] But, alas, when you get to a point where you can’t do all the work you would have to do to get it ‘magazine ready’, some adjustment has to happen. I love a neat and tidy garden, that’s my preference, but I have to make compromises. And my DH would always help me and I don’t want to see him overdo it either.

But I agree with the idea of keeping the leaves in the garden as part of the natural cycle. I used to collect the leaves from the lawn in a big bin to break down, but that became problematic and on a 1/4 acre lot, not exactly appealing to look at. So I stopped doing that.

I’ve always left the leaves to stay where they fall in the beds under the trees which most of my beds are. Come to think of it half the trees are Silver Maples and those leaves are small and don't smother. But I do have larger Maple leaves and a neighbor has a Sycamore that has these huge leaves that can smother, so we do have to watch that.

We mow the lawn with a mower that mulches but we collect in the mower bag, both leaves and grass clippings . I’m sure the end result is not as fine as using a machine that chops them up, but I’ve never had an issue with the leaves being too large and smothering my plants and they seem to break down in less than one season. My DH mows, and then empties the leaves in the back of the beds behind and around shrubs.

All of my beds keep their leaf mulch until it breaks down. In the spring, I rake the first 2ft of the front of the bed, back into the back of the bed and we lay down bark mulch on the first 2ft of all the beds, which gives us a neat appearance without removing all the leaves and without having to mulch the whole bed. So that’s the compromise I make. It works for us.

Maybe it’s our generation, but a quiet neighborhood in the fall, when people are out raking their leaves was my experience growing up. And hiring kids to rake your lawn was typical. There was something satisfying about it, it was just part of the Fall experience. So I have never been a fan of leaf blowers, but I understand why people use them. On a 1/4 acre lot I can afford not to. If you have to use a leaf blower, then Dee's idea of blowing all the leaves into a pile where you can process them with your leaf chopper, sounds like it could work.

As for cocoa mulch, I love the smell of it, and the texture and have tried it a few times. I don’t remember why I stopped using it. I can see how a leaf blower would blow it away. Again, perhaps a compromise, use cocoa mulch in some beds that are smaller that you can just rake out the leaves carefully to the lawn and mow them up or blow them away from there.

I do very little fall clean up which means I leave the annuals that edge my beds i place. I rake the leaves ito the bed go blanket everything and the edging plants keep them from blowing back into the lawn. I find the maple leaves a breeze ti deal with compared to the holly tree that drops leaves in the spring. Those wicked things never seem to decompose.

Have you considered asking your mow and blow guys to blow the leaves to where you want your compost pile? Then you could just add the leaves to the compost pile. I use a ring of welded wire fencing about 5’ in diameter and 5’ tall to contain them. I also put some of them under one of my maple trees where the grass doesn’t grow well so I have a shade garden.

Thanks, NHBabs - I think your idea is just what I will have my guy do this year. Some could be blown onto the lawns, where my grandson then could use our mulching mower to shred the bulk of the leaves. Then I shall try out my new leaf shredder for other areas. I am actually looking forward to doing this! Wish me luck. And pleasant, mild autumn weather to tackle the job... =)

In my prime days, I used to blow the leaves in a huge pile and stuff them in large contractor bags or paper leaf bags. That would be one weekend. Usually ran out of steam to also shread same day. So on another day, I would dump the saved leaves and shred them. Put some in the compost pile and mix them in and save some in the bags for whenever. Sometimes i would mix them with delivered mulch the next year to stretch the amount of usable mulch. In those days, I used hemlock and needed to add the leaves to make it look more natural.

Just remembered another thing I used to do with the bagged leaves over the winter.. I formed a circle of them in an out of the way area near the woods to create insulation for potted plants I wanted to keep. this was the new and/or divided plants that never got planted during the season. Or potted perennials that lived in pots long term.

Wendy - great idea. Do you think this bagged leaf method would work with potted Asiatic & Oriental lilies in pots? The pots are big ones, 18 inches in diameter, and present circumstances have made planting them in ground unlikely now. I will certainly have more than enough leaves to bag them!

Roxanne, I never overwintered those. Didn't grow them regularly. redlily beetles destroyed 1 or 2 I tried and never tried again. Mostly I overwintered hostas, daylilies, coral bells, grasses, clematis. hard to remember, but mostly stuff that always needs dividing or is pretty in a pot long term. Success rate pretty good but not perfect, maybe 75% success. 18" diameter is pretty huge pot! Good luck!!

roxanna what zone are you in/whereabouts do you live? (sorry I know I should already know but I can't remember!). I ask because I have overwintered lilies outside in crates (like this one here). You can see from the picture that these have very little protection for the bulbs. They are on my back sunny driveway near the garage, so there is some added heat from the ground and the building.

I am definitely not recommending this method (honestly, my doing it was from the inability to get them IN the garage one year, seeing they survived, and so just leaving them out there) but what I'm saying is that depending where you live, I would think the wall-of-leaf-bags would work well. I know it works for perennials.

Good luck!

:)

Dee

I lightly rake to get the leaves out of my extensive gardens, except when I want to keep them. My husband just does the lawn. If I've put piles of leaves in the lawn, he deals with them. Although I have extensive gardens, the raking isn't bad if I'm just getting the leaves out of my gardens, rather than dealing with the lawn or bagging them.

You can use a leave vacuum or electric leaf blower. Most home devices are lighter or allow you to put a light setting, so you get rid of the leaves, but not the mulch. Landscapers use heavy duty leaf blowers which will get rid of all your mulch, so you can pay them to mulch in the spring.

DH has a riding mower with an attachment that chops up the leaves and deposits them into hard-cased bins on the back of the mower. He usually empties the bin onto a large leaf mulch pile on the property, but if I'm around I'll direct him where in the beds to deposit the leaves, instead of having to haul them myself via wheelbarrow. At our old house when he had a regular lawnmower, he would just put the bag on it to collect the leaves, then put those into the big brown paper lawn bags, which I would store until ready to use.

We *never* haul fallen leaves off our property. Are you kidding? Chopped-up leaves make a fabulous mulch (and yes it looks nice), it's F-R-E-E, and it goes without saying it's good for the environment. I never have enough from own property, I'm the nutjob who takes the truck into the nearby chi-chi neighborhood to collect their lawn bags chock-full of finely shredded leaves lined up in neat rows at the street = SCORE! I think I collected something like 15-16 bags last fall, and even that combined with my own large pile of leaf mulch wasn't enough to much all of my beds and vegetable garden. Its breaks down quickly when shredded, so have to pile it on thick.

It might end up cheaper to pay the guy to shred them and deposit them on your beds for you (or at least in an nearby pile) than paying $$$$ for cocoa shell mulch.

ETA: I also rake leaves onto the beds directly from the lawn, but only in certain beds where it doesn't matter that it doesn't look as neat as the shredded stuff. Usually DH beats me to it and runs the mower over them before I have time to rake, though.