Leaf Raking Stories

[billski]

I've never been #1 at anything, but I may have you all beat for numbers of leaves bagged.

We have a fully landscaped 3/4 acre suburban lot. No place in back. There is no town vacuum cleaner like in Jersey. There is no truck or wagon. So into the bags we go. This weekend, I nailed 83 bags of wet leaves. Last year it was 200 bags, down from 250 before we had the trees thinned. There are 12 very large maple, oak and elms in the yard. The neighbors are constantly amazed.

A landscaper quit on us, after it tied up his entire crew for days. "Too much" he says. I see it as fall training for skiing....

It takes me roughly 40 hours in my middle-aged body to do the job.

We thought we'd be smart and hire 4 high school football players to do the work as part of a fund-raiser. After one day, I swore I'd never do it again. I was able to bag twice as many leaves by myself as four of them could in the same amount of time. One to supervise, one to talk, one to work, and another to spend most of the time picking leaves off the rake....

 

[Hawkshot99]

I just mow my lawn every day with the mulch kit on. 15 mins a day and I am good. We have lots of trees too. The patio and drive way get vacuumed with the gas vacuum and bagged.

 

[TheBEast]

I just broke down today and bought a blower/vac.....I have a small 1/4 acre lot with probably 6-8 big maples. Every year for the last 3 or 4 I talk about getting one. All the leaves aren't even down yet. Usually takes me a couple of days to clean then all up spread out over the month of November. We have to hall everything to a town yard waste the first and third Saturday's between 8:00 and noon, so I'm usually up until 10 or 11 pm those Friday nights before that loading everything into the truck (Toyota Tundra).....so we'll see how I make out this year with the blower/vac. Should speed things up quite a bit!

 

[MrMagic]

ha ha great story billski
my parent bought one of those leav vac/blowers. they love it but they got it easy they just blow them into the woods. IV used it a few times in the winter to blow snow from the drive way, worked great

 

[wa-loaf]

There's a 20 ft drop off into a swamp behind my house. All the leaves are going down there.

 

[RootDKJ]

Ok, not every town in Jersey has the big vacuum trucks. In fact mine doesn't, sort of. The city requires that you either (a) compost them on your property, (b) bag them in paper bags and put them out with your recycling (bi-weekly) pickup or (c) bring them to the town recycling center on your own, which is what I do for the most part.

Now the city does own one of those trucks, but only uses it to keep the sewers and gutters clear. Last weekend I see my neighbor (across the street) raking his leaves into the street. I ask him if the town has made a change to it's leaf pickup policy (I don't keep up on town politics at all and he knows everything). Unfortunately, the answer is no. He tells me that he knows that our street is on their route for Monday. He's taking the chance that the guy will pick his pile up. Later in the day I see the guy who lives next to him also now has a large pile in front of his house.

Monday I'm working from home, and I hear the truck coming down the street. I walk to the front of the house just in time to see the truck completely swerve away from his and his neighbors piles and then go back to sucking the leaves out of the gutters. I laughed.:lol: Meanwhile, the guy next to me now has his leaves piled out in the street:blink:

 

[drjeff]

Crazy leaves today!!! I've got one of those trail behind the tractor lawn/leaf vacccums (Cyclone Rake Commnader Pro) - it will hold something like 30 bushels of mulched leaves. Today was a 300 bushel day Almost ran out of space where I dump all my grass clippings/mulched leaves.

Stupid wind the last couple of days out of the E/SE actually was blowing the leaves from the trees in/around my yard ONTO my lawn, whereas the regular N/NW wind will blow them off the yard and into the woods

 

[Marc]

I've got about 1 - 1.5 acres of lawn to rake. They get put in the wood wagon and driven down by the brook with the 38 hp tractor. Bagging is for city folk.

 

[gorgonzola]

1 acre + 30 something oaks, norway maples, long needle pines = 2 days so far raking , blowing and pulling sweeper with tractor. these are my "bulk" removal days, still have at least 1 more day to clean planting beds, gutters and "fine" clean

fortunatley i just have to hedgerow them at the curb for town vac

 

[SKIQUATTRO]

been bagging with the mower..lots of stops to unload, up to 40 bags thus far...yard now is completly covered, next weekend we will be out there in full force, raking/bagging, making leaf piles for the kids...cider, tunes then some pumpkin ales to replenish all fluids lost !!!!!

 

[Glenn]

I've got an acre in CT. I've blown up 2 used walk behind leaf blowers. Last year, I bought a nice Billy Goat with a 6hp Robin/Subaru. The thing does awesome. This Spring, I bought an Echo backpack blower with a 50cc. I bought that primarily for the yard in VT. It works awesome in VT and does great for the around the fence in CT. I took a half day last week just to do leaves. I worked straight from 11:30 to 6:30 blowing leaves and mowing the lawn. Looks like most of the leaves have fallen over the weekend, so I should be able to get them up this week. I just don't like running out of daylight so early.

 

[4aprice]

Believe it or not we actually have woods in my neighborhood and the leaves go there. I have a 5hp blower and gas handblower as well. My moms place has approximately 3 acres of lawn and we have the High School crew (daughters friends) help there. We use the blowers and 2 tarp teams and move it all into the woods there too.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ

 

[Greg]

We probably have almost 3/4 acre of lawn with several large oaks in the yard and more in the back. Luckily we have a lot of woods in the back where we dump everything. After raking the first couple years, we went out and bought a pull behind sweeper that works pretty well. It took my wife and I about 3 hours to clean up the bulk of it this weekend. Still more to come down though. The oaks usually don't finish up dropping leaves until the middle of the month. Probably one more sweep, then a final cut/bag and we're done. I discovered a new way to take care of the flower beds too. I just set the old beater push mulching mower at the highest height and blasted everything. A lot quicker than hand cutting everything out.

 

[Sky]

I've gone through a couple of the cheaper blower/vacs and am now on season 2 with the "Stihl" blower vac. I don't use the vac portion much....it's much faster to blow the leaves into piles and jam thim into trash barrels and haul the barrels into the woods in back of the house.

The vac works great around the gardens etc....and after the leaves are down, for sucking up those remnant leaves from the neighbor's yard.

Nothing worse than shoveling snow with a bunch of leaves underneath! I think "shoveling leaves" has got to be a special circle in hell.

 

[campgottagopee]

No leaf raking here---live on top of big hill so the wind takes care of mine.

 

[billski]

We probably have almost 3/4 acre of lawn with several large oaks in the year and more in the back. Luckily we have a lot of wood in the back where we dump everything. After raking the first couple years, we went out and bought a pull behind sweeper that works pretty well. It took my wife and I about 3 hours to clean up the bulk of it this weekend. Still more to come down though. The oaks usually don't finish up dropping leaves until the middle of the month. Probably one more sweep, then a final cut/bag and we're done. I discovered a new way to take care of the flower beds too. I just set the old beater push mulching mower at the highest height and blasted everything. A lot quicker than hand cutting everything out.

Only the maples have dropped here. The oaks and elms have barely started. I'm away next weekend for Wilderness First Aid training. It's gonna be a mess when I get back!

 

[severine]

Technically, we are not supposed to take care of the lawn here. That's why we pay a landlord. But his handy guy hardly mows the lawn and never raked last year: the girl upstairs got half the yard in the spring and I got the other half. I likely will do that half this fall and throw it in a pile in the back to compost. The Japanese maple lost all its leaves in the rain last week, but the 2 maples out back still have most of theirs.

 

[St. Bear]

This seems like an appropriate place for this question.

Does anybody have any experience with a tow-behind lawn sweeper? After spending the last few weekends blowing and raking my lawn, with more to do (still some more leaves to fall), a sweeper is starting to look real enticing.

 

[powhunter]

I just mow my lawn every day with the mulch kit on. 15 mins a day and I am good. We have lots of trees too. The patio and drive way get vacuumed with the gas vacuum and bagged.

Yep That what I do... Got a little over an acre with about 6 or 7 decent size oaks and maples...mulch it once a week then I just rent a 10 hp blower for 25 bucks for half the day once the oaks have dropped

steveo

 

[gorgonzola]

This seems like an appropriate place for this question.

Does anybody have any experience with a tow-behind lawn sweeper? After spending the last few weekends blowing and raking my lawn, with more to do (still some more leaves to fall), a sweeper is starting to look real enticing.

thats what i use to do my 1 acre with 30ish oak/maple/long needle pines. works pretty well as long as your yard is realtively smooth and level, picks up pine needles and acorns and can be lowered to do the driveway. i also have a black locust with the tiny little leaves and it gets those too, just make sure you pick up all the twigs/stick as it will get jammed up.