I first mulched my leaves in 2008. By this time of the year the lawn was more leaf than grass and it wasn't really breaking down. 2009 was marginally better and was the first year I did pretty heavy organic feeding (3,000 lbs on 5,500 sq. ft). 2010 was probably a BL record at around 7,000 lbs/thousand and the leaf mulch broke down faster. This year was 9,400 lbs including lots of sawdust and soil conditioner.

Over the past two weeks I really thought I overdid a few areas in the backyard as I was too lazy to properly rearrange the leaves that I blew in from the beds. In these spots along my wall I mulched about 12-18" of leaves two weeks in a row - I think these are oak leaves (big brown ones, kind of waxy that take a few passes with the mower). We had some decent rain; I looked out the window this morning and you can't see any leaf mulch at all in my backyard. The purple plum and cherry leaves always broke down relatively quick, but not these guys, in the past they were taking at least 10 days to really see a change.

Tomorrow I'm going to do the final leaf mulching back there (after I blow the leaves in it will be about 4" on average over 2400 sq. ft.) After this weekend I'll move them to the front hill as it gets more sun and less leaves, so I have to be fair to that part of the lawn and give it some OM love.

When I tell this to the wife and kids their eyes glass over, figure you folks would appreciate it.

It's so cool to see the microherd change to gobble leaves at a pace that you never imagined. I still am in awe of it all.

My kids even make fun of me when I eye the neighbors' big brown bags of leaves all nicely arranged in their driveways. I really want to go over there, grab all of those bags, and spread'em across my lawn. However, I've been told I can't b/c "that's the house that didn't give out any Halloween candy." ....don't ask me what that has to do with grabbing some leaves???

Maybe they've put razor blades in the leaves?

"that's the house that didn't give out any Halloween candy."

That WAS the Halloween candy.

Here are some before and after pix. This is the third week of this density of leaves; its hard to gauge from the photo but the before photo has areas that are 12" and somewhat compressed. I'm sure I had a grin a mild wide as I plowed through it with the SuTech (it was so high in areas that the leaves were getting pushed ahead and it only slowed down once).

I always get some mulch from the beds (you can see from the pix). I'm trying to teach the kids that you have to be gentle with the blower in the beds.

From here on out I move the leaves from the back to the front; this area has gotten more than any other and it gets virtually no sun now.

Color looked better before the leaf mulch. I'm watering them in with an old fashioned fan sprinkler and will take pix again later in the week after the upcoming rain.

Before:


Closeup:


After:
Same angle as before shot:


After #2:
Better angle for morning sun:

That's a lot of leaves. I'm jealous.

I'm done with the leaves!!! On the low side of normal this year -- 23" or 24" deep total. Maybe some to still blow out of the beds, but I'm done...

andy10917 wrote:I'm done with the leaves!!! On the low side of normal this year -- 23" or 24" deep total. Maybe some to still blow out of the beds, but I'm done...

I think I'm down a bit too, but Irene brought down a huge amount, so I think it all evened out. Outside of my neighbor's weeping willow I'm about 90% done. One pear tree, some leaves off a few cherries, and then the hydrangea and shrub roses. There are 30 6+' hydrangea and about 45 4' shrub roses, so that's still some decent leaf litter. This year I've only been blowing/mulching once on the weekend versus prior years 2x a week. Not sure why, schedule just seems to work out that way.

Impressive! So as long as their are some leaves showing, it is not smothered?

eriocaulon wrote:Impressive! So as long as their are some leaves showing, it is not smothered?

That's my rule/plan (just to keep some green showing). In a few areas where it is now very shady you can barely see any green at all. Last year I did a test and purposely overdid it in one of those areas and the grass was fine come April. My theory is that it was already dormant/asleep at that point.

Thanks. ...cause pic #2 would make me worried.

eriocaulon wrote:Thanks. ...cause pic #2 would make me worried.

I've got a few areas worse than that. In the past I have raked out the bigger stuff in early December, not sure if I'll bother.

I think its Ok this time of year because the grass back there is pretty much asleep; if I did it in early October I thin it might be a problem.

In my front yard the leaves mulch much finer (purple plum, kwonzan cherry and sandpiper cherry). I've got areas at least 2" deep after this weekend, but its is a fine dark confetti that should be gone by Friday.

I don’t have a lot of leaves in my yard. Last year I bagged leaves from the side of the road from neighbor’s houses mostly for a lasagna garden area. This is the first fall that I am really mulching leaves for the lawn.

Getting leaves this year has become much easier. Everyone is using these nice 30 lb paper bags to bag up there leaves. I covered a 2500 sqft section yesterday and mulched mowed them. Looks great.

Now picture this. Here I am watching a neighbor’s lawn service blow leaves, bag them and then mow. I then come over and take the bags of leaves, dump them all over my yard and mulch mow. Now if the white crazy van pulls ups with the guys in white suits, who do they take away? I was laughing about this the whole time I was mowing.

grassboro wrote:I don’t have a lot of leaves in my yard. Last year I bagged leaves from the side of the road from neighbor’s houses mostly for a lasagna garden area. This is the first fall that I am really mulching leaves for the lawn.

Getting leaves this year has become much easier. Everyone is using these nice 30 lb paper bags to bag up there leaves. I covered a 2500 sqft section yesterday and mulched mowed them. Looks great.

Now picture this. Here I am watching a neighbor’s lawn service blow leaves, bag them and then mow. I then come over and take the bags of leaves, dump them all over my yard and mulch mow. Now if the white crazy van pulls ups with the guys in white suits, who do they take away? I was laughing about this the whole time I was mowing.

Drove by a house yesterday that must have had 20 clear plastic bags of leaves lined up at the curb. Took a lot of willpower to move on.

My neighbor gave me four bags of leaves but warned me he had put a few pennysavers in there. I thought I got them all out, but when you have leaves 6-10" high its easy to miss. I missed one of them and ended up mulching in a bit of newspaper (and had to pick up all the shreds of plastic).

My backyard is about 50% covered already, but its a very thin layer (although it looks great, all yellow cherry leaves and bright red ones from the bloodgood maples). Haven't yet decided what I'm doing with this batch; my gut says to relocate them all to the front hill. Hydrangeas are starting to drop now too.

I have the only house on the block with no leaves on the lawn. It really bugs me to see that no one is cleaning them up at all.

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simpson wrote:I have the only house on the block with no leaves on the lawn. It really bugs me to see that no one is cleaning them up at all.

I hear you on that. I have been mulching all of my leaves for weeks now. But only one of my neighbors has been doing the leaves. Most of the others have raked enormous piles to the edge near the street and just left them there to blow away. Directly next door has not done anything yet... again, just blowing around. I guess on the upside I get a little more OM to mulch in... but sometimes I just want to get up in the morning and see a nice clear lawn!

Bentface1 wrote:

simpson wrote:I have the only house on the block with no leaves on the lawn. It really bugs me to see that no one is cleaning them up at all.

I hear you on that. I have been mulching all of my leaves for weeks now. But only one of my neighbors has been doing the leaves. Most of the others have raked enormous piles to the edge near the street and just left them there to blow away. Directly next door has not done anything yet... again, just blowing around. I guess on the upside I get a little more OM to mulch in... but sometimes I just want to get up in the morning and see a nice clear lawn!

Does your municipality come around and suck up all the leaves on the street? I used to live on a block in southern nassau county that did that.

jglongisland wrote:

Bentface1 wrote:

simpson wrote:I have the only house on the block with no leaves on the lawn. It really bugs me to see that no one is cleaning them up at all.

I hear you on that. I have been mulching all of my leaves for weeks now. But only one of my neighbors has been doing the leaves. Most of the others have raked enormous piles to the edge near the street and just left them there to blow away. Directly next door has not done anything yet... again, just blowing around. I guess on the upside I get a little more OM to mulch in... but sometimes I just want to get up in the morning and see a nice clear lawn!

Does your municipality come around and suck up all the leaves on the street? I used to live on a block in southern nassau county that did that.

Nope. You have to bag them up into the paper recyclable bags (or mulch them, ha). There are still a few leaves on the trees so not sure if they are waiting for all of them to come down, or what. It becomes a little frustrating to be finishing up your front lawn and then watch a fresh batch blow across the street...

For the life of me, I have no idea why anyone would ever want to spend a day raking when they can just run over them with the lawnmower. Even if you don't think that it will help the soil, it is a great lazy man's option. That alone should be enough to get people to do it. Likewise, I have no idea why someone would want to bag their clippings and then take the time to get rid of them.

Half of my lawn gets a mother load of leaves naturally, but the other half just gets a moderate amount. I am always tempted to "borrow" some leaves from the neighbors, but they already think I am crazy and I don't need to give them any more ammo.