Chopping Fall Leaves

Yesterday, I figured out a better way to do something, and it might help someone else here.

Our lawn is about an acre, and we have lots of big oak and hickory trees. Every fall, I have to deal with an enormous quantity of leaves.

I have a riding mower with a grass catcher attachment. A big hard plastic tube attaches to the outlet on the side of the mower, and cut grass and leaves are blown up that tube to fill three 15-gallon trash can-like containers on the back of the mower.

Trouble is, it doesn't work well on leaves. Whole dry leaves jam the tube up, and I have to constantly stop and clear it. If I try to chop the leaves up first by mowing over them with the catcher tube removed, that doesn't work either. The mostly-whole leaves just get blown out to the side.

In past years, I've picked up leaves with the lawnmower by taking little tiny bites, so as not to let the leaves block the tube. And, we've raked and hauled lots and lots of pickup truck loads of leaves to the compost pile. That's a lot of work, and the whole. unchopped leaves don't break down very well in the compost.

Yesterday, I found out the thing to do is mow over the leaves with the catcher attached. It quickly got blocked, and I just kept going. I mowed the whole yard that way, then I cleared the blockage and went over it again - the catcher works fine on little pieces of chopped-up leaves.

When the outlet on the mower deck is blocked, the grass and leaves have no place to go. It's just like a "mulching attachment" that purposely blocks the outlet on some mowers. With no place to go, the leaves get chopped up fine and the pieces drop to the ground. The grass catcher picks them up easily, then.

I added about 450 gallons of mixed grass clippings and finely-chopped leaves to my compost pile yesterday. Good stuff!

Ozark
Thanks for the tip. I am going to send it to my husband's email. He had the same issues as you with the blocking of the tube, etc. It took a long time for him to even agree to use the mulching mower to chop and deposit leaves back to the ground as is recommended (he likes the lawn neat..no "rowes of chopped leaves"...I've actually seen him SWEEP the lawn with a house BROOM so the blades go all in the same direction..no kidding)... and then when he couldn't get them to mulch without all the issues you mentioned it just gave him a reason not to mess with it all. When his mower shoot blocked as yours did, he just got frustrated and took it off along with the catchers. Last year and the year before he raked an acre's worth of tree leaves onto a huge tarp and then pulled the tarp over to a pile where it gets dumped. And, like you said, those whole leaves don't break down in the pile. I just end up with snake haven because the leaves do heat up nicely and the critters like the warmth. So I have the negatives related to composting...and none of the benefits.