Eh, who cares what they think, right?

Like Grassboro, last weekend both the houses across the street blew their leaves into my lawn.

I love it!

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Not sure what to do about leaves and mulching. The leaves I have are pretty small. Maybe 1-2" long and less than .5" wide. I do not have a mulching mower, but was hoping my blower/sucker would mulch it down more. It really didn't.

I guess my question is... Is 1.5"x.5" leaf litter already small enough that I do not need to mulch it more?

One other thing. I am thinking of getting some small leaves from a neighbor. She's got some common Bermuda and I believe annual rye in her lawn. Should I have much concern about that stuff mixing in with my improved seeded Bermuda lawn? The lawn has come in pretty thick, so I'm sure competition would be difficult for any newcomers, but would rather avoid the headache if it's going to be a major one.

Smaller would be better, but they will probably break down fine. Especially if you still have a little warmth in your soil.

As far as importing leaves, it comes down to your personal comfort levels.

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I know this thread has been lying dormant for a while, but it was an interesting read. Good job on the leaves!

We do our own leaves, I mulch some but I bag a lot too. I am going to mulch more this fall.

A friendly older gentleman a couple doors down helps several people with their yards. I use a rake and a bag frame, and I can do our yard fairly quickly. He uses a backpack blower and will blow for like 3 hours straight some evenings! He is a friendly guy and sometimes I help him but he enjoys it too much for me to interfere very often. I could probably swipe a bag here and there and no one would mind. I have an electric mulch vac bagger thing that works pretty good so I could make short work of them and get them out on the lawn.

I shake my head every time I see someone that bags leaves in the Fall and then pays for compost in the Spring. It is insanity in my view.

Even my 3 year old tells me, "You don't burn leaves......you mulch 'em.", every time we see/smell a leaf pile burning.

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My big debate right now is whether to spend the time to take all the branches/twigs and pruned rose stems and run them through the chipper or just bag and throw out. I know I should do the former, but it takes a lot of time. I'm wondering what would happen if I just rake/blow all of them into the grass and run them over with the mower. The only downside is that if a kid walks around barefoot 6 weeks from now and a rose stem hasn't yet broken down, they could get a nasty puncture wound.

jglongisland wrote:My big debate right now is whether to spend the time to take all the branches/twigs and pruned rose stems and run them through the chipper or just bag and throw out. I know I should do the former, but it takes a lot of time. I'm wondering what would happen if I just rake/blow all of them into the grass and run them over with the mower. The only downside is that if a kid walks around barefoot 6 weeks from now and a rose stem hasn't yet broken down, they could get a nasty puncture wound.

I throw rose stems and small branches less then ~1/3 inch onto the lawn and mulch them. Interestingly, the mulching process seems to strip off the thorns such that any branches that remain after mowing over them generally have no thorns left on them. Thick, woody canes, however, get tossed into the long term mulch pile to break down since I don't have a shredder. Otherwise they would get shredded and tossed on the lawn.

A couple weeks ago, I spring pruned my roses. I have about 8 established and 16 young roses. I mulched all the canes and there isn't anything left in the lawn today that looks like it came from a rose. All that being said, I also don't mulch the roses into the back lawn because the kids play back there barefoot sometimes and I do worry about thorns and bare feet.

So after all that rambling, and re-reading the post, I'm not sure I helped you about what to do...