My son and I went out collecting other people's bagged leaves today. Can you believe people throw this stuff away? I'll chop it up with my Lawn Boy, stash it in my compost bins for the winter, and use it for mulch on my beds in the spring. I spread them around the shrub beds in the fall. This picture is just some of the leaves. I've already gathered my neighbor's leaves, and a guy from around the corner is going to drop off several trailers full tomorrow. It's better than Christmas! Weeeee!!!
Here are my leaf storage bins:
When one of our neighbors was doing the raking himself (before hired help) my husband would take his 74 bags of leaves for the chipper and the six compost piles. Amazing how people can throw the leaves out and then pay for mulch, isn't it?
Three of the compost bins are on the left. The photo was actually taken to show the Asters in full bloom.
juggler: That's really impressive!
My next door neighbor has 2 big pin oaks and I get a lot of his leaves. Nobody else around here seems to bag them; they just mulch them into the lawn.
Karen
I used to collect bags of leaves and made a huge plastic bag to rake them into and haul them home in from my neighbor's place. Now, more and more, I am windrowing them like I used to do, but I am mulching most of them in the windrow by backing the mower over them and this is better as I have a much smaller volume. Perhaps 5% is lost on the ground but that isn't too bad.
May I ask what windrowing is?
pirl,
It is simply throwing the leaves inward towards the unmowed side [from the mower side-mount discharge] rather than outward or back and forth as is conventional. As you get to the center of the strip, the leaves are in a narrow strip.
Thank you. I learn something new every day at DG.
