Autumn Leaves

[rosarugosa]

Raking leaves is one of the fall chores around here, and there are 3 scheduled leaf pickups in the fall, with 1 more in the spring. Not everyone in the neighborhood cleans up their leaves, and we used to joke that sooner or later they would blow into our yard and we would end up raking them. Well the situation has evolved to the point where this year, nobody in the neighborhood is raking their leaves except us (and "us" is mostly me, because DH has back pain and issues that limit his participation). This is a suburban neighborhood with fairly small yards with lawns, so it's not like we're in a heavily wooded area where it wouldn't make sense to clean up the leaves.
So anyway, I'm trying to figure out what makes sense here. I can be a little compulsive, but I recognize this is kind of a lost cause, and obsessing over fallen leaves seems like the antithesis of simple living. Next week is the final fall leaf pickup, and I tend to get stressed about this, which is pretty silly. I will probably end up having put out a total of 40 bags of leaves with the potential for another 40 in the spring, which doesn't seem like the best use of my life's energy. I'm trying to figure out if there is some reasonable way for me to corral the leaves, shred them, and use them for mulch instead of buying bark mulch every year or two and turn this into an actual win. We don't have a huge yard, so I don't want to devote a huge amount of space for a leaf pile, since that would diminish the space we have for gardening.
Does anyone do this or something similar? Leaf shredder recommendations? What about just shredding in place in the garden beds? I would appreciate your thoughts.

[Alan]

I use my mulching mower to mulch as I mow. The mulched leaves disappear into the grass.

[rosarugosa]

Thanks, Alan. I should have mentioned that only about 20% of our yard is lawn, and the rest is mulched garden beds (shrubs & perennials), so that would only work for us to a limited degree. We do have a mulching mower though, so perhaps we aren't using it to its fullest potential.

[rodeosweetheart]

Thanks, Alan. I should have mentioned that only about 20% of our yard is lawn, and the rest is mulched garden beds (shrubs & perennials), so that would only work for us to a limited degree. We do have a mulching mower though, so perhaps we aren't using it to its fullest potential.

I do what Alan does, and if I am starting a new bed, I rake all the leaves into a pile on the bed and then layer from there.

But it kind of sounds like you are out of new bed space.

I dislike it when the leaves blow over my nicely straw-mulched flower beds.

I will rake them all over the annual beds and then put straw on them for next year. Gosh, though, it sounds like you get the whole neighborhood's leaves. DH swears by them as composing, but I prefer to mow over them to break them up, as it takes forever for them to break down.

So I guess I would rake them into piles and mow/mulch the piles and then distribute them in garden.

[IshbelRobertson]

We have three large compost boxes made from old railway sleepers and boards. They are used in strict rotation, so we always have a good supply of compost. We have another, smaller bin for leaves.

[catherine]

I do a combo of Alan, rodeo, and Ishbel. DH uses the mulcher on the lawn mower and then he "mows" the driveway to chop up the leaves and then we put those mulched leaves in a pile we use for our composter as "browns" The mulch from the grass stays on the grass. You mention bags--doesn't your town just vacuum them up unbagged? That would drive me crazy if the town insisted on our bagging leaves. My neighbor does that, and I love him but I can't stand the thought of sending organic matter to a landfill in plastic bags.

[CathyA]

I have always found it insane to send leaves in plastic bags to a dump. :(
I realize that people have much smaller properties than we have, and maybe find this "unsightly", but I think everyone should have a small/med/large area where they put all their leaves routinely. We have several large fenced areas where we put our leaves and in a couple years, it's the best mulch/compost around.
Leaf piles sink very quickly.
The mulching mowers are a good idea too, up to a point.....when you leave the cut-up leaves on the ground. We take so much food away from the earth. To take up even less space in leaf "storage" is to cut them first and then put them in a compost pile.
Some of those electric blowers are good to cut up leaves while they suck them up.

We have an electric Toro leaf vac and it's pretty incredible, as far as it's power. What we sometimes do is open up one of our "leaf corrals" (open up one side of the fenced-in area), and blow the leaves into it. If this is too hard for you......you could pay someone to do it. Our various leaf piles have eventually turned into the best mulch/compost ever!

Here's a pic of one of our corrals. By next autumn, it will only be about 1/3 full because they shrink so much.
I suppose it also helps us to not care about how it looks, nor do we have any neighbors that could object to it. It does make the best mulch/compost though! It's called black gold.

1548

[SteveinMN]

That would drive me crazy if the town insisted on our bagging leaves.
There is a county composting site near us at which we can drop the leaves we don't use in our compost bin. Most of the counties around here permit the use of biodegradable leaf bags, so you can either put your leaves out for pickup by your garbage hauler (so they can take them to the compost site) or you can take them to the compost dropoff yourself. But our county has decreed no bags. The bags -- even the biodegradable ones -- have to be emptied on-site and taken back with you. After one year in which we used the bio bags once and found they tore easily (especially when wet) we changed to thick plastic "contractor's" bags which we save from year to year. Not so simple, but what can you do??

[rosarugosa]

We do use paper composting bags and they go to a town composting site, so it's not so bad as plastic bags going to a landfill. We do end up spending a bit on bags though.

[merince]

I've seen people raking them over flower beds and then weigh them down with chicken wire. They remove the chicken wire in the spring and re-use it next fall. That's what they use for mulch.