Leaf removal from beds and other detail work can eat a lot of time. So here's some quick tips to try to make it more efficient.
Blow the beds surrounding a house in a clockwise direction unless you have good reason to do otherwise. Being as every backpack blower I've ever seen has a right hand tube it works better to have the tube towards the house to blow everything out.
Be careful of directing your exhaust towards the house with the blower close to it when behind hedges etc. You can melt vinyl siding!
Remove your lower blower tube (or shorten it if it telescopes) so you can use higher throttle, not blast the mulch out and for better maneuverability in tight quarters.
Try to blow the leaves/debris out ONTO the lawn rather than through the bed. I once watched a guy blow all off his leaves from a bed 50 feet through his pachysandra.
Bounce the wind stream off of the house when in tight beds. Blow slightly over the top, not directly into the leaves in the beds. That way the leaves move but the mulch or pine straw for the most part stays in place.
I've got one with red lava rock in the beds.
It's bad enough when a few chunks of mulch get dislodged and blown into the grass, but I've got stupid lava rocks rolling right out of the bed as easily as the leaves. Gotta walk around feeling for them and kicking them back where they belong before mowing.
I both agree and disagree to a point.
You certainly want to be as efficient as possible while blowing beds out and if you have no loose mulch or light stone this is an efficient strategy, however, if you do have loose mulch and light stone, I minimize blowing out of the beds until i get to a corner and then only have to clean stones and mulch from lawn in one area instead of the whole border.
Another effective strategy is to work in tandem with another blower. Teamwork! One blows front of beds from the front, another from the back, both blowing through the bed.
Another strategy using teamwork is to have one doing detail front and back while another is directing debris as a back wind to direct wherever is most efficient. this works fairly well when you have to blow somewhat against the wind or in swirling winds.
* Caution using teamwork, if you and your team mate are not on the same page, you will want to kill each other before you finish.
Sometimes a hand held blower works better in tight places
With any blower a wider lower velocity works better than a narrow concentrated air stream. The less concentrated and gentler air seem to not blow out mulch or (god forbid ROCKS) if you do it right. Sometimes I take the end of the nozzle off to achieve this. Also some blowers you can shorten the nozzle or have a choice of nozzle lengths, my 800x has a shorter nozzle option
I removed 1 section of nozzle out of 3 to have the end not so close to the ground. Does not help that I am short. With that third section removed I can still touch the ground with the end but that is better than having it 24" too long
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