...and baby just got them. My mother and her neighbor were going to mulch their leaves (about 2,000 pounds all told), but decided that it's too much hassle to mow three or four times. So they'll be collecting them and sending them to me again this year.

Queue evil laugh here. BWAHAHAHAH.....

I had to curtail my leaf collection after my second year. The first year, I asked a couple of people who were dumping their leaves into their garbage (technically not even legal). The second year, a neighbor with lots of very large trees gave me his, then another neighbor heard about it. By that time, I had all the leaves I could mow, but told him I'd take 10 bags. And I think word got out that I was taking leaves because the next week, there were probably 30 bags stacked against my fence and thrown over it into the back yard.

My wife was not happy.

I mowed as many as I could into the lawn that fall and composted some, too. I also piled them about 4 feet thick on the garden. The rest stayed in the bags. That was a REALLY bad idea. We get our precipitation as snow, so even though the bags were sealed, the leaves got plenty wet, but they were sealed well enough that any decomposition was anaerobic. And I dumped a few bags around the lawn before mowing the first time in the spring. The smell lasted for days.

My wife was VERY unhappy.

I now mow only those leaves that fall on my lawn.

OK, I can completely understand that one, I'd be displeased if people kept tossing leaf bags on my lawn without asking.

I can easily take a hundred bags per year, no issues, and could do more if I could get more. That works out to around 300 pounds per thousand, and those were pretty much gone in 2 weeks (you could practically hear the worms applauding when I applied the stuff). Plus I'd go over it multiple times to get it to turn to tiny shards.

Lucky dude. I always have to work for mine.

I used to have a neighbor who collected hundreds of bags per season. Once she filled her yard with about 18 inches of leaf fill, she started making a bed down in our local ravine. The neighbor across the street from the ravine got a little ticked off when she took the bags his lawn service was bagging and dumped them out in the ravine 10 feet away. Technically she was littering, so he was right, but still, she was trying to recycle and make a little natural garden area.

MorphPA you are a crazy man Or should I say grassman

Just curious do you have any other hobbies?

Grassphillic wrote:MorphPA you are a crazy man Or should I say grassman

Just curious do you have any other hobbies?

Do you mean there ARE any other hobbies...? Um, really? Oh.

Several. I make soap, both from scratch using oil and lye and the more-creative but less-controllable melt and pour process--my pot-scrubber soap is pretty popular amongst family and friends.

I've been a computer gamer for decades; I'm currently addicted to Tropico 3: Absolute Power.

I'm an amateur photographer (of modest talent and skill, nothing stellar).

Plus I read a lot, 3 to 5 books a week. The cellar's set up as library shelving, but I had to trim my collection five years ago when I moved. There was no way for us to cart 2,000 books.

melt and pour is less controllable than oil and lye?

Maybe I don't know what melt and pour is or you're probably doing it differently from the way I did it 35 years ago or so. I was collecting fat scraps from the restaurant where I worked, rendering them, then adding the lye. The results always varied from batch to batch (and the stuff would burn a layer of skin off if you used it in the first month or so).

And of course, after draining the pot, all the solids that were left were salted heavily and eaten as snack food (my dad called them cracklings). I shudder to think of what I did to my arteries back then, but I was so active that I was probably burning everything off.

bpgreen wrote:melt and pour is less controllable than oil and lye?

In terms of ingredients; I'm stuck with the stuff that's in there, although I can add stuff.

MorpheusPA wrote:Plus I read a lot, 3 to 5 books a week. The cellar's set up as library shelving, but I had to trim my collection five years ago when I moved. There was no way for us to cart 2,000 books.

Let me guess, you had the books shredded and spread them in your lawn.

My neighbor bags his clippings every time he mows so I thought about asking him if I could have what he bags. Or is that a bad idea since he uses synthetics to fertilize?

Do you wait until your neighbors have already bagged the leaves before you ask for them or do you offer to rake them yourself?

Jason

My neighbor bags his clippings every time he mows so I thought about asking him if I could have what he bags. Or is that a bad idea since he uses synthetics to fertilize?

No, the grass is the grass. You might pick up some pesticide residue, but the plusses probably outweigh the negatives.

One other thing to concern yourself with, though. Remember that if you don't compost them (fully!), you get all that lovely Poa Triv stolon material and a lovely parting gift of various broadleaf and grassy weed seeds.

I always compost material that I don't know. Fully.

jcmdallas wrote:Let me guess, you had the books shredded and spread them in your lawn.

That is a story. Given that I was jettisoning about 500 books, every single place wanted to go through the boxes and pick and choose. Even our library wouldn't take them without doing that.

Unacceptable, to say the least; I wasn't carting them twice, plus cleaning up the mess they made. So most went to recycling. I wasn't composting at the time, so they didn't end up on the lawn or gardens. If I have to trim in the future, they will.

My neighbor bags his clippings every time he mows so I thought about asking him if I could have what he bags. Or is that a bad idea since he uses synthetics to fertilize?

Synthetics are fine--no problems there! Depending on your level of organic dedication, the use of herbicides or pesticides might be the kicker for you, but once synthetic fertilizers are absorbed they turn into organic material (and you aren't taking his soil).

As long as he doesn't have weeds you don't want, I don't see an issue. I'd keep the layers very small as clippings smell and mat up if you use too much, but if the lawns are the same size you can certainly spread his clippings over yours.

Like Andy said, P. triv is a kicker. P. annua seeds would also be bad, but fully composting the material will take care of both, plus any other weeds in it. If he has no P. triv or P. annua, I wouldn't worry about it too much (but you need to be sure of that).

Do you wait until your neighbors have already bagged the leaves before you ask for them or do you offer to rake them yourself?

Both. I know the two I take leaves from (they have a lovely ridge of trees in the back yard), so I go over and help, plus pick up what they have. They call me when they have a load.

MorpheusPA wrote:

Grassphillic wrote:MorphPA you are a crazy man Or should I say grassman

Just curious do you have any other hobbies?

Plus I read a lot, 3 to 5 books a week. The cellar's set up as library shelving, but I had to trim my collection five years ago when I moved. There was no way for us to cart 2,000 books.

Time for electronic books - I'm usually good for 1-2 per week, my wife the same. She got her kindle first, mine came later, both kids have them too. Saving a ton of space in the house (about 250 books on all them at this point). My wife now likes reading on her iPad (although mostly with the kindle app as the iBook store sucks). Our local library will take them, but they have to be hauled there and that's a problem. There have to be hundreds of books all over our house.

I do keep thinking about it, and if I had normal person eyesight I'd probably have gone over long before this. CDs and DVDs are so much easier to store than hardcover books.

Regrettably, my eyesight isn't that good. I'm intolerant of small fonts (so most paperbacks are out), screens don't yet have the stability and resolution of a paper page (or the contrast), the screen reflections are an issue, and some of the lighting methods are a problem.

Like I said on the Pandigital Novel thread, I'm basically waiting for electronic paper that's fairly indistinguishable from normal paper.

MorpheusPA wrote:

jcmdallas wrote:My neighbor bags his clippings every time he mows so I thought about asking him if I could have what he bags. Or is that a bad idea since he uses synthetics to fertilize?

Like Andy said, P. triv is a kicker. P. annua seeds would also be bad, but fully composting the material will take care of both, plus any other weeds in it. If he has no P. triv or P. annua, I wouldn't worry about it too much (but you need to be sure of that).

I dont think he will have problems with those weeds in Dallas. They dont do too well in the heat right? Ive never seen those weeds untill I started looking in the cool season forum here. None in south Texas that I have ever seen. Crabgrass, henbit, and oxallis are a different story though.

Morpheuspa,
What is your process for mulching all those leaves. Do you just go back and forth with the lawn mower? When the leaves are small then do you distribute then across the lawn?
I have alot of leaves which i put out for pick up. Maybe I should rethink that.

gmogelesky wrote:I have alot of leaves which i put out for pick up.

Sounds like raking - and that sounds like hard work!

As they fall, just mulch mow 'em into the lawn.

Josh wrote:

MorpheusPA wrote:

jcmdallas wrote:My neighbor bags his clippings every time he mows so I thought about asking him if I could have what he bags. Or is that a bad idea since he uses synthetics to fertilize?

Like Andy said, P. triv is a kicker. P. annua seeds would also be bad, but fully composting the material will take care of both, plus any other weeds in it. If he has no P. triv or P. annua, I wouldn't worry about it too much (but you need to be sure of that).

I dont think he will have problems with those weeds in Dallas. They dont do too well in the heat right? Ive never seen those weeds untill I started looking in the cool season forum here. None in south Texas that I have ever seen. Crabgrass, henbit, and oxallis are a different story though.

I have only seen POA (or what I think is POA) in the spring and that was mainly in Bermuda lawns. I don't think that weed stands a chance in a healthy St. Augustine lawn.

Jason

Jason:

If you say so. Poa Annua is the 5th most distributed plant on the planet. It grows in the Antarctic and the Sahara. I suspect that it is present, but the coloration difference isn't as pronounced - making it less obvious.

gmogelesky wrote:Morpheuspa,
What is your process for mulching all those leaves. Do you just go back and forth with the lawn mower? When the leaves are small then do you distribute then across the lawn?
I have alot of leaves which i put out for pick up. Maybe I should rethink that.

I usually make two passes and they disappear. If the drop is really really heavy or I blew a pile that is too large (i.e, 16-20") I may have to make 3-4 passes.

gmogelesky wrote:Morpheuspa,
What is your process for mulching all those leaves. Do you just go back and forth with the lawn mower? When the leaves are small then do you distribute then across the lawn?
I have alot of leaves which i put out for pick up. Maybe I should rethink that.

Spread 'em and shred 'em. I tend to spread the bags about as far as I'm going to, then go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with the lawnmower until they're teeny pieces.

If I were mulching normal leaf fall, one or two runs would be fine. Putting down 3" at a time, multiple steps are required.