Have you cleared the leaves in your yard yet?

[MamaKath]

I am wondering how people take care of getting rid of their leaves. We live in the sticks in the woods as my kids say and they are everywhere. Most of the yard is covered with about a foot deep pile of leaves. We are trying to decide if we should pay someone to take care of them, rake them (I have started this seemingly unending task but am unsure of my commitment to it), or purchase a leaf blower to help in the process. Here is a picture of part of my backyard, we only rake the stuff inside the fance though. ;-)


http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/user_files/17235.jpg

[steph2003]

Ours are still falling where I live in NC! Plus we live in a new devlopment & of course the developers when building plowed thru not leaving much in the way of trees. Most of the trees around us are still fairly young & don't leave much in the way of leaves so we'll just rake them ourselves.

[Marisa6826]

Our lawn guys take care of them once a week. I have a 1/3 of an acre and big 100+ year old oaks that just cover our lawn mercilessly. They use leave blowers and push them out into the street. The town is *supposed* to come take them away, but they still haven't. Now, honestly, it's really a road hazard since everybody has these HUGE piles in front. It's really hard to navigate especially in rainy weather.

I'm not sure that it's necessarily good for your lawn to keep the leaves down unless you fertilize first. Not sure if that makes a difference or not to you.

-m

[mudder17]

Nope! We just mulched them with the lawn mower and let them sit on the lawn over the winter. Most of the leaves land in an area that gets lots of sun, so it's actually nice to leave the mulched remains over there--it helps the grass grow better. (At least that's our justification/opinion. :))


Eileen

Mother of Beautiful Kaya, www.chemicalgraphics.com/kaya
http://www.babysfirstsite.org/newtickers/ticker/16994.birthday.png

http://www.gynosaur.com/assets/ribbons/ribbon_garnet_6m.gif Breastfed 8 months and counting

[muskiesusan]

That's our backyard! We live on a wooded lot that is about an acre. Neither DH or I are big fans of raking, so he just runs his riding lawn mower over them. Our yard looks as good as the neighbors who rake. We also use the rationale that we are actually fertilizing the lawn with this method!

Susan
Mom to Nick 10/01/01
& Alex 04/27/04

[JFC]

We use a blower/leaf vac each week. A month into this and our oaks are still dropping strong, and the maples haven't started yet, so I'm not if we'll keep this pace. I like the idea of mulching them w/ the lawn mower though - we might try that next week and see how it goes! ;-)

[MamaKath]

"I'm not sure that it's necessarily good for your lawn to keep the leaves down unless you fertilize first. Not sure if that makes a difference or not to you."

I am cracking up reading this since I wish with all my heart we could actually grow grass. We have so many trees that any green in our backyard is moss or weeds, and in the front it clovers. This is actually how we figured out that I have a talent for finding 4 leaf clovers, lol, there are just so gosh darn many. ;-)

I do remember the leaves in the streets when we lived in NJ. Every town we lived in that had that policy was much later in picking them up than they scheduled themselves to be. :-( I can sympathize with ya!

[MamaKath]

Do you have stumps? I know we have had major mower problems due to the unknown stumps back there. Otherwise that sounds so much easier. If only grass would grow....

[zuzu]

What a great back yard! We (and by "we" I mostly mean DH ;)) rake and/or use a leaf blower in the front yard, then suck them up through the blower which mulches them. This greatly reduces the number of bags we need to use. In the back yard (about a half acre), DH just uses the mulcher on the mower and goes over the lawn/leaves several times. Luckily they fall in stages, so we're not stuck with too many at once. Unfortunately, we've lost six large trees to storms in the past two years, but it has cut down on the fallen leaves.

I'm not sure what I'd do in your situation. I'll bet the kids have a blast playing in the leaves though!

Melissa, mom to Sarah (5/03)

[jubilee]

I voted we rake them, but it's still early and we have weeks and weeks left of leaves falling. Our recycle collecters take the leaves once we put them in our yard debris can- only problem is that we need 4-5 cans a week!!