It's leaf raking time and I once again solicit the vast accumulated wisdom of the membership.

I live on a heavily wooded property and hand rake approx. 2 acres of mostly rolling land.

It is no fun and I was thinking about a "tow behind" leaf vacuum for my riding mower.

Any experience or opinions will be greatly appreciated.

TIA!

John

Let me know if that works.

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Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

i'm in the same boat, couple acres of lawn surrounded by centuries old maples and a lot of hickories. There are just to many leaves for vacs, it would take a month of Sundays, just to many leaves. I use a lawn tractor and blue tarp. First I mow twice, first time blowing the leaves out, second time blowing the leaves in into long windrows. Mowing twice chops them up and reduces the fluff factor. I then rake the windrows onto a large blue tarp, and when full drag the tarp with the lawn tractor to where I pile them. Takes multiple trips but I can get it all done in a day. I just pick my day, which is a day the wind isnt blowing.

I put my mower deck on high and mow the leaves after I blow them from flower beds. Leaves are good mulch. I planted a bunch of pine trees and I don't have to mow under them now.

Where are you going to dump the bins? If you you need to use a trailer to get them disposed of, it is not much of an improvement.

I have trees everywhere and am surrounded by hardwoods, so started using a mulching mower about 8 years ago and will never be without it. My latest mower is a Cub Cadet XT3 tractor with a 54" deck. The store installed a mulching kit inside the fabricated deck and it works great. I also bought a set of Cub Cadet Gator mulching blades and install them every fall. I can go through a few inches of leaves, leaving practically nothing visible behind the mower. Good lawn food for the lawn and do not have to deal with hauling or handling leaves.

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Gary
SWCA 2515

I agree. Mulch those suckers. My raking days are far behind me.
That’s how nature does it

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“Look life in its iron face”

I pick up leaves on 2+ acres. THE best option is a tow behind lawn sweeper. Much larger capacity than anything else; and believe me I've tried them all.

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John

Been there done that and actually just hauled a perfectly good pull behind lawn sweeper to the dump. I can see that it might work where there are few leaves, but after buying a 48" leaf sweeper, I could not make a single round without having to dump it. I could not haul the lawn sweeper to a location where is does not have to be handled a second time. I had to start several piles and then reload it into a trailer to haul back in the woods. It took several trips and took a long time to accomplish. Lasted two years before I found how well the mulching kits work on riding lawnmower decks.

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Gary
SWCA 2515

Strong backpack blowers have made my life easier. Live in woods, put them in a bit deeper. Tarp hauling was back in the electric blower days.

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It's what I do, not what I am.

We get lots of leaves and usualy need to clean them weekly and its not a lot of fun doing almost an acre of oak leaves.

My neighbor has a trailer with a suction unit that tows behind the tractor. He uses the mower deck and that has a hose to the next blower unit and fills the trailer. The trailer is mostly some kind of canvas and opens to dump. It must hold a few yards of material. He swears by the thing.

I know it cost a few grand to buy.

The good things is it breaks down for storage when not needed.

He dumps the leaves into the wooded section of property.

I'll have to ask him what it is.

After spending every weekend with my wife all fall long dealing with leaves, I got a landscaper...

<Added>
He has an Agrifab leaf attachment. It does do a really good job.

I bought a generic vacuum that mounted on the back of my Airiens riding mower. It fit right on with no problems and works great. The instructions said it would fit several different manufactures. It has 2 removable bags enclosed in a hopper that mounts on the back. A side chute goes from the discharge to that hopper. I bought it at Home Depot about 4 years ago for less the $200. Check them out

We have big old maples plus a few other species, and when the leaves start to drop I attach the Powerflow attachment and bags to the old John Deere garden tractor. The Powerflow grabs the leaves as they come off the blades, chops them again and blows them up the tube into the bags. I haul them to the back of the property and pile them there for future mulch.
There are so many leaves they need to be collected once a week. One time I let them go too long and they got so deep the mower pan pushed them into a pile against the muffler and they caught fire.

Over the years I have tried several different methods for leaf cleanup. Because there is always other debris, branches wind blown trash etc. mixed into the leaves and depending on how wet or dry they are. First blowing as much as i can into a big pile I then rake it all onto a big blue tarp grabbing the four corners it gets dragged into the woods behind the house. When I lived in the rust belt it was already snowing in October and that could make cleanup even more challenging. The process would again be repeated in April with the added Toro (corded for more power) blower changed over for use with the vacuum bag attached for more detail cleanup in flower beds and perimeter of house. Depending on the size of next property I will probably go with a blower attachment mounted to my garden tractor and just blow it away. On more than one occasion I observed the lady next door blow her fall leaves into my yard, neighbors!

I drive my zero turn radius around the leaves, chopping them up and spraying the chopped leaves into piles. The chopped leaves are turned into the soil in the spring. I was a couple of days late one year, it snowed like crazy and I couldn't get to the leaves for a few months, what a mess that was.

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U.S. Coast Guard, retired CPO

I have a few acres and there is NO WAY I would rake or vacuum all of it. I usually go out on a very windy day with a mask and wrap-around safety glasses and blow the flower beds and all the accumulated leaves away from the house then just mow the yard with my riding mulching mower. The leaves all disappear.

We have too much land devoted to "the lawn" and too many trees that shed their leaves (and needles), and have used every leaf gathering/disposal device known to man-----including standing on our hind legs with leaf rakes in our hands----once---when we were younger and dumber.

THE SOLUTION: A DR LEAF and LAWN VACUUM a k a The Sucker-Upper (Google DR Power)

This device is towed by your riding mower which chops the leaves as many time as it chops them, and then discharges them as it does grass----only this time they're discharged into a chute carrying them to the Sucker-Upper. There they are met by a shredder powered by the Sucker-Upper's own engine (which also provides the power to create the vacuum), and then discharged into a hopper-----small, medium, or large, depending on how much you're willing and able to spend. And when I say a "shredder", what's left of the leaves varies from teeny-tiny pieces to powder.

Now if there's a downside to all this (and it will vary on the amount of leaves you have), it's what to do with what's left of the leaves. They're great mulch as noted above---if you have flower and vegetable gardens. We've used them to fill gulches and gullies, where they rather rapidly become plain old dirt capable of supporting 6-8-10,000 pound tractors. We've spread them in crop fields where they're disced into the ground. We have one little patch we call the burning pile field where we spread them out, and then run over them with a flail mower---and they eventually disappear.

And then there's this wrinkle which God thinks is hilarious. You Yankees are obliged to mess with leaves for two or three months (just like we are)----comfortable months. That's because you don't have Magnolia trees----those monsters the story books say we sit under and drink Mint Juleps. They dump their leaves in May, June, July---into August, and there'e enough of them on the ground now to have to tend to. We have three of those suckers---and one of them is a monster. I just went out and measured it----15 feet around about hip high----and 7 or 8 trunks from one base, and I have no idea how high it is; it just keeps on going----and raining leaves!!

Bottom Line: I have most every labor saving device there is, and the Sucker-Upper is my all time favorite. Aside from leaves, it also does grass clippings when your grass gets too long for whatever reason----and any and everything else that falls on your lawn. It even has it's own little wood chipper for when you come across a stick you don't dare run over with your mower.

Ralph Tremaine

My Dad has had a Trac Vac for about 35 years now, works great and still running the original engine.

TRAC-VAC, by the way, makes discharge chutes (sheet steel) for virtually any mower deck. DR Power has a one size fits all plastic gizzy (after you do A LOT of cut to suit-beat to fit work). I bought one of the DR chutes the first time around---maybe $100. I sat and stared at it, read the instructions, and sent it back. (Along the way, I'd talked to the DR Technical Assistance folks who took pity on me, and told me about the TRAC-VAC chutes.) They cost twice as much, and they're like a Porsche------"THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE"!!!

And a word or two (or six or eight) about mulching mowers and leaves: They are one of the many solutions we've tried over the years, and they work great if you don't have a lot of leaves. Otherwise they make for a sodden mess.

Ralph Tremaine

I'm about to buy the mulching attachment for the new mower. One thing does help quite a bit on mulching. Let your grass grow long so there's more stuff for the blades to pulverize.

I use a combination of mulching mower and pull behind sweeper. The sweeper cleans up any thing left on top of the grass.

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Old Age Ain't For Sissies

My old neighbor had one of these. Cleans the lawn like a squeegee and holds a ton of mulched up leaves. You do need a place to dump them.

Has it’s own engine. The bag folds up for easy storage. Thing got power.


America's #1 Lawn and Leaf Vacuum | Cyclone Rake

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I’m your Boogie Man, uh huh.

We had 4 1/2 acres with 70+ oak trees. Fall was interesting with leaves and
acorns. I had a John Deere with factory lawn cart that had belt driven motor on the outlet side of the deck to blow material into the cart.
We would to wait until leaves were dry or the would plug up the chute to the cart. This usually was into late October or November.
We were lucky because the farmer that owned the ground around us let me dump and he would till the leaves under.
The last year we were there said screw trying to pick up leaves, mowed twice with deck low and mulched the leaves. Took less time and effort.

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SWCA 1932 SWHF 135

Really. Why pop for a vac, a lawn sweeper is all you need.

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SWCA #3356, SWHF#611

I tried the bagger set for my Deere rider and it seemed I had to empty it every 50 feet. Then I tried a bag you tow behind the lawn tractor. Works like a charm, & it only costs $70. Not sure how long it'll last without tearing, I got one season out of it so far without it tearing. Not much to risk for $70. Highly recommend.

Edit: It does use the frame from the bagger set, so you still need to own a bagger set, you just don't use the bags that came with the bagger set and instead use the tow behind cloth bag linked below.

I like the sound of that

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“Look life in its iron face”

Dear JohnHL

I used to live on a lake on a 1/2 acre lot that I mowed and liked to keep nice with a good lawn and a awesome sand beach. Almost heaven!

Unfortunately, we were surrounded by oak trees and my lawn tended to collect a thick layer of oak leaves every fall. The neighbors on the down wind side of the lake, would call the county every time they saw anybody blowing leaves into the lake and they would issue a ticket based on photographs. Cannot say that I blame them since all the lake debris ended up on their beach but.........

I had a track-vac and loved it. Awesome, still have the wagon thirty years later, durable and dependable. Worked awesome and I can highly recommend it.

The big issue is disposal. If you got a place to dispose of the leaves awesome. I did not have a convenient disposal location so I had to get creative.

I built a circular firepit with 4 inch steel pipes placed around the bottom for oxygen. Every other one went to the center while the odd ones only went through the wall. With the volume of leaves collected, I would get a fire started and using a backpack blower, blow air in the bottom of the fire pit to maintain the combustion of the often wet and chopped up leaves. Usually took a afternoon on the weekend, every weekend in October and November, but it was rather fun.

Trac Vac works great. Figure out how to dispose of the debris.

Regards,
Crankster

Thanks to everyone for the replies and suggestions!

I'm leaning towards something like the "Cyclone Rake" or
"DR Lawn-Vac".

I have plenty of woods to dump the leaves (that is where they go after hand raking and tarping/dragging).

I like the idea of mulching, but when I chopped up the leaves with my mower and left them, it seems they were choking my mostly zoysia grass lawn. (It is my understanding that zoysia doesn't like thatch build-up).

John

JohnHL I feel your pain. I have 2+acres of lawn affected by leaves (a lot of leaves!).
I first tried mulching, as mentioned above, if you have 1”plus thickness due to a lot of leaves it makes a real mess. Then I tried a leaf vac. It was a mess to empty (a hazmat suit would have been nice), fine dust everywhere and you need a place to dump a lot of bags. Next I raked just around the house. I filled 30 - 60gal lawn & leaf bags and blew the rest of the property with a leaf blower. There are a lot of wooded areas to blow the leaves. The next step was to cut down the trees around the house ( don’t panic, they were old and diseased and hollow in the middle).
Because I have a lot of woods frontage, I now just use a very powerful leaf blower and wait until the fallen leaves dry out, then just blow them into different sections of the woods. NO handling of anything but the leaf blower. Just Sayen!

Be SAFE and Shoot Often!