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BS: screw the leaf raking
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Subject: BS: screw the leaf raking From: olddude Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:11 PM Not this year, I got out my big Troy Built rider and ground them to dust. I figured it would be good mulch anyway ... tired of spending hours trying to collect up the droppings from five trees in my front lawn it worked great |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,Eliza Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:15 PM When I had my half-acre garden in my last house, I got fed up like you olddude with trying to collect the fallen leaves. So I just left them lying on the ground. And they all eventually disappeared. Either the wind took them away, or they rotted, or the worms pulled them under the ground. No worries! |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Megan L Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:18 PM Nah nah yev baith got it wrang be like us 23rd september i go to bed with the trees full of sweet green leaves. During the night we hae a wee blaw as the locals call it and I get up in the morning to naked trees (The brazen hussys) and not a leaf in sight :) |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: frogprince Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:22 PM I tried to get away with the Eliza method at least once a few years ago. We have just way too many leaves; they laid and rotted and just about destroyed the lawn. I'm afraid that even powdered, that's about what would happen. Sometimes I'm lucky and we get a big honkin' wind that comes through right, so someone else inherits 'em. But I can't count on that. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,Eliza Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:23 PM I know those wee blaws up there Megan. It's a wonder the trees themselves didn't blaw awa! |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: gnu Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:24 PM Mowing/mulching is the only sane thing to do. I recall visiting my uncle some years ago and seeing about 8 large "clear" orange plastic bags at roadside for garbage pickup at a property that was at least 60 acres and mostly treed... HUH? |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Megan L Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:28 PM Naw Eliza they wid only dae that if the wind ever stopped they say ye kin ayeweys tell an Orkadian because they always walk at a strange angle \ |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,Eliza Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:33 PM LOL Megan! My sister has lived in Scotland for the last 30 years, and she has the hairiest legs I've ever seen. She refuses to shave them as she says it keeps her warm! |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: gnu Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:49 PM Me Newfie buddy in Deer Lake used ta say that when a wind would come up in his home of Trepassy, they had ta tether the chickens down. Once, they found a rooster wit da feathers blown clear off 'n. De old woman 'ad ta knit 'n a pair a coveralls. If ya might t'ink dat a funny sight, ya shoulda seen 'n wit 'e's a 'old of a 'en wit one arm and tryin ta get da coveralls offa'n 'er wit de odder. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,olddude Date: 22 Oct 12 - 04:58 PM I can't let them sit, they blow in my neighbors yard and he gets pissed but this works |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Bat Goddess Date: 22 Oct 12 - 05:45 PM I've never seen the point of raking, blowing, or (as I saw today) vacuuming leaves into bags that one then leaves at the curb for trash pickup. Tom and I own 33 acres of trees. We've got waaaay more than five around the house. Believe me, my neighbors don't care what I do -- they all have a lot fewer trees (my up the hill neighbor has a 5 acre field) than we do. They're my winter mulch on my flower beds, protecting them whether there's a snow cover or not. Snow is another form of mulch. Anywho, next spring I'll rake them first out of the hosta bed in the middle of the turnaround, then get them off the rockery, the sundial bed, and the back beds. Then, just for neatness sake, I'll rake what's left of them on the driveway and pile them on the compost heap. Or one of the other compost heaps. Just my two cents' worth, but it works for us. Linn |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Bill D Date: 22 Oct 12 - 05:46 PM We are surrounded by trees... everyone gets their own and some of everyone else's. I have to get rid of most of 'em or they WOULD ruin the lawn.... but gave up raking 25 years ago and bought a blower. To get them from the back yard (where they fall first) to the front and the curb, I blow them onto a big sheet of heavy-duty plastic, then grab the corners and drag it around. We almost always get 2 pickups each Fall... |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Henry Krinkle Date: 22 Oct 12 - 05:57 PM Lawns use petroleum to maintain unless you use a reel mower. Let the leaves lie. Plant plants. Screw the lawn. Use a sling blade ( some folks call it a Kaiser blade, but I call it a sling blade) on the weeds. =(:-( )) |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Rapparee Date: 22 Oct 12 - 06:15 PM Olddude, go to the local nursery store and get some humatic acid (also called "humates"). It's a soil "activator" that will help turn the mulched leaves into good soil. This is a solid, by the way, with s filler material -- neither will harm your lawn, birds, or anything else. Use a spreader, don't do like I did and broadcast it with your hands -- your hands will look like you've been working on railroad cars and it will take a bit of effort to get it all off. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Little Hawk Date: 22 Oct 12 - 06:18 PM That's a good practical approach, Henry, but it wouldn't be the way to go in this neighborhood. I've got way too many maple leaves here to do by hand or with a blower, so I just hire a local crew to come on one day in the later Fall and scoot around with their lawn-cutting machines and suck up all the leaves. It takes them about 20 minutes to half an hour to do the whole job, and it only has to be done once a year. Definitely worth the money, I think. If I lived out west on a ranch or down in the tropics or in some more isolated natural setting, I wouldn't worry about having a lawn at all...just let Nature do pretty much what it wanted to. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,kendall Date: 23 Oct 12 - 09:32 AM I hate to see bags of leaves at the curbside because I know they are going to take up valuable space in a landfill. I just take my rider mower and go around in concentric circles blowing the leaves across the lawn and into a neat row at the edges of the property. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,Peter Date: 23 Oct 12 - 09:39 AM Once the leaves are bagged simply store them for a year - hey presto free potting compost. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: JohnInKansas Date: 24 Oct 12 - 05:31 AM When we first moved into a new house (not the current one) I found that our yard was the place where all the leaves from most of an entire street "upwind" collected. (Aided by the neighbors with leaf blowers who just blew theirs into the street so the wind could pick them up and move them to my lawn a little easier.) I had a mulcher/limb grinder so I raked them into the mulcher, which reduced them in volume by about 5 to 1. Because of the bulk remaining, I shoveled the results into the back of our pickup truck, mostly to about two feet deep, and drove them (8 truck loads, as I recall) to a fenced area where the prior owners had created a "dog run." At the dog run, I ran it all through the the mulcher again for an additional 3 or 4 to one reduction. The "dog run" (approx 20 ft x 38 ft) was now about 23 inches deep in ground up leaves. The mulch effect quite nicely blocked the growth of several kinds of "rough vegetation" that had been difficult to mow due to all the corners my mower couldn't get into. (The area was too shaded to grow grass.) When I figured out that all the grinding and hauling and re-grinding was taking a lot of time, I just put the mulching plug in the mower deck, and the following year I just ran over them all when I did the last mowing on the yard grass, or when necessary just an extra "mowing" for the last leaves. With the mower in "mulching mode" there wasn't enough visible "mulch" on the grass to hurt the lawn, and I didn't have to do the rest of that hard labor. Unfortunately, if the leaves got a little deep before being mowed/mulched, they had a tendency to pile up under the front end of the mower where they caught fire from the muffler. If not caught promptly, the result was complete "burnout" of all the engine wiring. (Every good method has its disadvantages that must be accomodated.) It took about three years for the "dog run" to work itself down to where you couldn't tell the original leaf dump had happened, and of course the wild weeds resumed growing. My subsequent solution there for the weeds was something roughly analogous to a combination of agent orange and napalm - used carefully according to package instructions for residential applications, of course. I eventually added a small storage shed in that space. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: kendall Date: 24 Oct 12 - 06:07 AM Nature put them there, nature will take them away. Everything has a purpose, except balls on a priest, tits on a nun and republicans. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,olddude Date: 24 Oct 12 - 09:11 AM Kendall LOL that is great |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Bobert Date: 24 Oct 12 - 09:19 AM Yup... A decent riding mower with a bagger attachment and a leaf blower is all you need... Plus, if you make compost you know that you need 1/2 green (bagged grass clippings) and 1/2 brown (bagged ground up leaves)... Mix the two with yer kitchen scraps and you have black gold... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,leeneia Date: 24 Oct 12 - 10:29 AM 35 years ago we planted a crab apple tree in our small yard because the gardening book said it would be only 15 feet high. Trouble is, they didn't mention that it would also be 30 feet across. Now it shades most of the yard. I tried growing grass for shade, but it died out twice. (I have read that that is what it always does.) Now the land under the tree is thickly carpeted with violets. I don't cut, mow, bag or mulch anything. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: frogprince Date: 24 Oct 12 - 10:50 AM Kendall: ROFLMAO |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Crowhugger Date: 24 Oct 12 - 12:38 PM Leaves in landfill? Not any more, not anyplace I know of in southern ONtario at any rate. Municipalities compost them and do a "free for the taking" day in the spring. Also give free wood chips roadside and park maintenance, which people use for mulch. Cheaper than landfill and easier to answer for at election time. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: JohnInKansas Date: 24 Oct 12 - 01:49 PM In a former residence, the guy across the street mowed every Monday - twice each time in "crossed paths" to make sure it all stayed even. Then he applied fertilizer every Tuesday. Then he watered the lawn quite liberally on Wednesday. Then he mowed every Thursday. (Twice of course.) Then Fertilized every Friday. Then he Watered every Saturday. He had a beautiful lawn, except on Sunday when he just laid back on his ass and did nothing, allowing it to get "sort of shaggy" due to all the fertilizer. All his lawn clippings were carefully collected and bagged, and dumped illegaly in a farmer's hedgerow two blocks up the street. It didn't seem to me that he had "much of a life," but when I learned a little more about his family and what he did for a living I wondered if maybe he didn't really have all that much that he wanted to live for. Not my style, but maybe he was as happy as he knew how to be. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Janie Date: 24 Oct 12 - 03:27 PM Don't have and can't afford a riding mower. Have 30 (mostly) oak trees on a 145'x100' lot. Not only a huge amount of leaves to deal with, since they are mostly oak, they take their own sweet time coming down. The leaves really can't be left, and also can't be mulched and left in place - they would still smother everything else. We don't have to do much mowing in summer because of the shade, but we sure make up for it for 8 1/2 weeks from late October until early January. I'd love to be able to mulch and compost all of them. Just too labor intensive. The first two years here I did use the bagger on my push mower to shred enough to mulch the beds with. (bagger on a push mower doesn't shred them very well, though.) The biggest problem with that, however, is there are thousands of acorns sucked up in the process, and they germinate very nicely when well tucked in with shredded oak leaves on a garden bed. Son is particularly dreading this year because I have an injured shoulder which means I will be doing all of the blowing, and he will be doing all of the dragging down to the curb after the leaves are blown onto the tarp. Poor dear. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: gnu Date: 24 Oct 12 - 03:34 PM Y'all got ekerns? Bag em an sell em ta deer hunters! Thay ya can hire people ta deal with the leaves like the rich folk. >;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Janie Date: 24 Oct 12 - 08:03 PM We got so many daggum deer the hunters don't need no friggin' acorns. Bring on the growing coyote population! |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Bobert Date: 24 Oct 12 - 08:09 PM Looks as if we're having another bumper crop of acorns... Last year we left 'u but then paid the price in having to pull out lots of little oak seedlings with long roots... If anyone has any ideas on how best to get them all up, I'm all ears... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Janie Date: 24 Oct 12 - 08:47 PM The biggest casualty from acorns is the cumulative effect over a few years on the windshield of my car. All those tiny little dings accumulate and make driving with night blindness even worse.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: GUEST,olddude Date: 24 Oct 12 - 10:49 PM Bobster acorns do what I use to do at my office .. suck them up with a shop vac, works great ... ya can get em all then dump em |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Janie Date: 24 Oct 12 - 11:00 PM Darlin' Dan, I think you don't quite grok the difference in scale.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Donuel Date: 25 Oct 12 - 12:25 PM Yeah ol dude, down with unsustainable suburban artificial non organic customs. Up with helping what happens naturally. |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 25 Oct 12 - 12:41 PM Leaves are not meant to be raked! Why do you think they call them "leaves"? Because you should leave them alone! If they were meant to be raked up, they'd be called "rakes"! |
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Subject: RE: BS: screw the leaf raking From: Elmore Date: 26 Oct 12 - 10:03 AM None of that leaf raking for me. We live in an old people's condo. |
