Leaf Removel

[eggy]

i know we have touched on this several times but I am still a little but well confused on how to approach the lawns with heavy and medium leafs this year. I guess from the input i have recieved mulching is the best bet..do you guys side discharge then or put on mulching plates??? Also my dealer thinks the only way to go is with bagging of course..but 2,000 for a system wow!!! no wonder he thinks that...any other tips,,,,????

[Eric ELM]

We go over a lawn with double blades, OCDC closed, and then go over it again with the OCDC open at a cross pattern to what we did the first time. We do this when the leaves are heavy, but when they are light like now, we just go over it like if we were mowing it. This works good, we haven't picked up leaves for 6 years.

[landscaper3]

Up here in Maine we are swamped with leave you have no choice but to bag them. Our way is to lift the front deck on our Walker mowers and suck em up and dump em on site or for added cost take away.

[bob]

I bolt the bagger back on the Grasshopper and use it. I do require on site disposal of leaves. The bagger will dump the leaves in a large, compact pile. Theres no way I'm going to pick them up and stuff them in trash bags.

[OBRYANMAINT]

nothing to do with good lawn mower or not we have too much leaves here in northern ohio for that to be an option we get them to curb suck them into the truck

[Evan528]

I really find it hard to beleave a mower can mulch heavy leaves so small that they disapear. Here where i live most lawn companys ussually do leaf cleanups about 3 times in the fall ay about a rate of 5 times the cutting amount. This means hauling all leaves to the curbside to be picked up by township. This fall once you guys who mulch leaves start "mulching leaves i would like to see beofre and after pictures..... No way could you mulch as many leaves as we get around here. leaves get so thick ROUND HERE IN TWO WEEKS THAt there up to your ankles!

[thelawnguy]

"If you have a "good" lawn mower you can just mulch them into dust."

Tell ya what Stone, come back up here to CT sometime in mid-November, with your "good" mower set up for leaf mulching, if you can mulch all these leaves into dust I will pay your travel time and spring for eats plus pay you for what I would get to haul the leaves away, if not we take pictures of the mess with your new camera, post em up, oh yeah, you help me load the 6 yards of mulched leaves into my truck.

[gene gls]

What works for one opperator will not always work for another.

I have one property that is about an acre and a half, cornner lot, in the center of town.It has 26 maple trees that range from 12 to 24" in dia around the boundry,along with 4 beech,3 birch,and a dogwood.Last year I had a pile from the front yard at least 30ft in dia and 6ft deep. This is only a partial cleanup, the home owner dose the finnal cleanup.I make sure to do it on a dry sunny day so the truck loader chopps them up real fine.

[Premo Services]

In years past i have went over 2 or three times with mulching blades, then bagged. This year, i have mulching kits for the lazer and turf tracer, i hope there will be less going over & over,and bagging & mo money in my pocket!

[Edited by mow money on 09-12-2000 at 03:20 AM]

[Tony S]

anybody use a Bluebird collection system to help w/ clean ups? I'm thinking of getting one for the ZTR.

[Eric ELM]

We do the mulching of the leaves each week, not just 3 times a season like Evan says they do. Our worst lawn for leaves has a lot of big oaks, hickory, some maple and assorted trees. I'll take a before and after picture of it this fall. I've seen the leaves so deep that I have to raise the deck the first time over or it will start pushing the leaves. I'm not saying this method will work for all areas or all mowers, but we don't pick up leaves anymore. I do know that maple leaves are the hardest to mulch up, but it can be done. This fall I'm adding a new set up I haven't used yet. It is a device that goes on the spindle first that has a short piece of chain on each side of it and the way it is made, the chains are about 3" above the blades to help chop up leaves even better. With this device and double gators, it should grind them up even better, I hope. :)
If this gives you an idea of how many leaves we get on a lawn, when I used to pick them up, I got around 30 loads with a 22 bushel home made lawn vac I made, on a weekly basis of doing this. That is 660 bushels of chopped leaves. You guys from the east coast say you have a lot more than us. How many bushels a week to you have? Double? Tripple? this amount?

[Five Star Lawn Care LLC]

what i do for heavy leaves is i have a truck mounted sucker, with 10 foot sides built up on an EZ DUMP on my 3/4 ton dodge. plus a trac vac on one of the Dixies makes clean-ups easy and simply...for my regular lawn customers i charge the the price to cut there plus 50% of that if they want there leaves cleaned up on a weekly basis.