Mulch leaves or rake & bag?

[LJ lawn]

i forgot about this one-i helped a guy do a leaf cleanup last year and the only thing he had was an ancient bunton 36" walk behind,i wanted to see if it would mulch down the piles he was making.as i made a few passes i smelled smoke then flames,i almost burned down this ladys yard with his piece of crap machine. what had happened is the blades jammed,belt got hot and cought the leaves on fire.we got it out quickly but,was quite a stressful event.it brought back memories when i parked my moms car next to a leaf pile and cought it on fire.(major stress).

[Doug406]

Not to knock mulching, but those pictures are not as nice as a blower, truckloader, and trac vac would have created. You have got to admit that!
And if it is under contract, if they are expecting fall leaf cleanups, and you are providing fall leaf mulch ups, I bet i would not hire you again next year, just because of the false impression you gave the customer.
Now if mulch is fine with the customer, great. But why would you want to cut down your work time to provide a mediocure (spelled wrong do you think) service while I (your competition) am going to blow, truck load, and trac vac your lawn for a 100% quality job. And we charge by the man hour.
Do not get me wrong, we do some mulching, but not for the high profile, high quality customers, only for the quick cheap ones that want to save a buck.

[MOW ED]

I don't even make it an issue as this is really the time when the Walker is priceless. I vacuum everything up off the lawn and it looks great when I am done. It doesn't matter if it is a residence or a commercial property , they all get vacummed and picked up.

I am lucky because the city picks up the debris at curbside starting the first week in Oct. thru sometime in November (depending on the weather). The customers that require me to remove the leaves have no problem transferring their green into my account

[John DiMartino]

I have been bagging too,I only do large propertys-so there is always an established dump pile there already from the years of branches and sticks that have fallen,i use that with the owners permission,then if they want ill come back and clean up the dump with the tractor/loader for a fee.If they wanted it curbside-i just drop a garbage bag in the 44 gallon can and do it that way.I will be mowing at 2 1/2 this week,so it would be hard to hide the leaves anyway in the lower grass.I love to drive away with the lawn perfect-not one leave left-its gotten me a lot of cleanup work here already.

[awm]

I mulch w murray hydrostat.Absolutely no
visible residue when im done.One problem
with mulching is hardwood leaves have
low ph 3.2 etc.this must be compensated
for.

[jaclawn]

I have one account that filled up a 7 yard dump body over the course of the season. I mulched them weekly till this week. I used double passes when mulching. I cut there yesterday, First pass with mulcher, second pass with bagger. Result= Total volume of leaves removed in 2000. Half yard. 95% of the leaves are down, the next cut should be able to mulch the rest just fine.

[luckylawnboy]

Well you can vaccum leaves all you want. But let me tell you now that mulching does help the turf for the fallowing year. I am a turf science major here at Purdue U. and done some reserching from past articles. The only time that I have found mulching to not be okay is when you have 80 year old tree that has lost all of its leaves, and you only have about 1000sq. ft. to try to mulch them into that small of an area.. Just make sure that the leaves are small enough so that they dont act like a blanket and smother the grass,and your be ok. Well you have to use a little common sence. (sp)

I think dylan summed it up pretty nicley. And trust me Zac Reicher is one of my professors here at Purdue, great guy, and really knows his turf.

[cutntrim]

It's interesting to hear how other guys handle leaves. Up here in Southern Ontario, the two municipalities we work in both offer curbside pickup. Virtually ALL of the companies here bag the leaves and either remove them entirely, or leave them curbside. The vast majority simply put their baggers on and dump load after load at the curbside. We do it a little different than most. We blow the leaves off the lawn and into nearby garden beds, or to the curb. Then we cut the lawn w/o bagging. We've got double blades on our WB's and Atomics on our Z-Master. Our lawns look very similar to the way Erics do. We offer a FULL fall cleanup for those who want it, at the end of the season. Then we clean up EVERY SINGLE LEAF from the customer's property and pile them curbside for pickup. With the amount of leaves that many of our properties have on them, we'd have to make several passes (even with double blades) to mulch them up to our satisfaction. Therefor, we believe it to be faster to use blowers and then only do one pass with the mowers. Also we reduce or eliminate, string trimming on most accounts during October when we have to spend time blowing. This past week we did full trimming everywhere because it was our last scheduled week of cutting.

Whew...'nuff said.

[powerreel]

You smokers better be extra careful with those butts if you are collecting leaves, ie. Flaming Truck Jams Local Freeway News At 5:00!

[Bluegrass Lawn Service]

I clean the lawns both way depending on size. If a lot of trees with small lawn, I mulch first time or two. Then I start picking up leaves. Down town lawns any way I can. I've used tarps and back pack blower. This works well in small tight areas. However out on the lawns when the mulch is getting to be too much, I pick up. Too make it quicker, one operator mulches the other picks up the mulch with trac vac. No leaves nothing but clean green lawns. No mater what I do with mulching to get even close I would need to go over at least two times. Dixie Choppers is all I use.

Has anyone tried the new vac for the Dixie Choppers? The one that dumps and runs off the spindle. Also the shute is open on the bottom. though I might try one next year on one of my other dixies