Pictured in the middle you can see the oak tree. Due to its position, 80% of the leaves fell onto the pool and driveway, so I just raked the all up.
First time oak tree owner, and it turned into 50 bags 6 hours later. Thought it may be like 8-9 bags tops. Whoops
The composting center allows me to dump out (no bags) leaves, but 50 bags is kinda pushing it as that’s normally for tree limbs and stud. And that’s 4+ 30min round trips and have to dump all 50 out
So I have 3 options. But idk which to go with;
1) burn them
2) dump them out across my 2 acres and mow over and mulch (need to buy mulching blade). Oak leaves are tough to mulch I hear. But maybe this will help my lawn still?
3) dump the into woods
by DirtyOught
23 Comments
Find a spot and have a nice big fire on your lot.
Dump them in the woods. Forests seem to have some secret method for dealing with leaves.
Mulch and compost them. It looks like you have plenty of space to make a compost pile somewhere, do it and make fertilizer for your garden for free. Join us on r/composting.
Mulch them and/or start a compost pile somewhere on your property where you can put leaves and grass clippings. I have a few smaller ones around my property that compost down quite a bit on their own.
On your neighbors lawn
Mulching is basically free fertilizer for your grass. I never bag or dispose of my leaves, and if you mulch them fine enough it’s hardly visible.
Burn
Get a Worx leaf mulcher and add a rino-tuff brush trimmer head to it. It takes all of 3 minutes to modify it.
https://preview.redd.it/bsplyjaeg84g1.jpeg?width=1008&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60ec1ebf6e2f01f6e3b550d67b46a8c239e34a33
It eats up the leaves. Your 50 bags will be 5.
Spread all over the lawn and mulch into the ground
Looking at your picture you at surrounded by wooded areas. I would have not even bothered raking or mulching them and would have just blown everything into the woods. That’s what I do: mulch less dense areas and rake gardens/ornamental areas. Everything else gets blown into the wooded areas. Looks mint and takes a fraction of the time (or cost) for everyone around here getting “fall clean ups.”
Option 1: mulching. Is Free. Returns 50% of necessary nutrients back to soil.
Option 2: be a dumb*ss and put biodegradable LEAVES in 50 plastic garbage bags and wonder what to do next.
Take them out of the bags.
Gas and a match
Mow them up into smithereens on all that lawn. A land grant university in Michigan did research on mulching leaves and concluded if they were broken down to the size of a dime or less the leaves would compost directly into the lawn soil. I’ve done this for years on my lawn. Great results.
Leaves are free fertilizer. If you’re raking, piling, bagging, and hauling, you are working way too hard. Don’t send it to the land fill. That’s wasted time, effort, and resources.
The key is to keep on mowing until the residue is worked down below the crown of your lawn so the grass blades are not covered. Come spring, you won’t even know the dead leaves were ever there covering your yard.
Just mulch them…
Get some geobins and make some compost with the leaves, kitchen scraps and coffee grounds. Spread that compost on your lawn in 1 to 2 years.
I use a burn barrel. Prop up on blocks, dig a little berm around the barrel and water hose in reach. Problem solved within a couple of hours.
Find pallets. Fasten 4 of them together in a cube shape. Dump in. I have one of these in my backyard (Im surrounded by 80ft Maple tress), about 20-30 leaf bags (muchled with lawnmower first) will fit in one cube. Takes about a year for them to break down. I fill mine up every year and they’re ready to fill by the following fall.
buy plastic trash can with plastic lid. cut hole in lid that fits weed wacker. dump bag of leaves in can, wack em. Pull handle of wacker up and down like a giant blender. That full can will now be 3 inches of leaf powder. dump on compost area. Repeat as needed. Once you have a handful of bags done, add some green stuff (like grass clippings, food waste, etc..). And repeat in layers. Add some water… leave it for a week, after a week, use fork to mix it up.. You have just made the most perfect compost for your area.
Dump at the edge of woods. Run over with lawn mower a few times. Blow them into the woods.
It isn’t necessary to mow them before sending into the woods, but I’ve found it helps them settle in better and makes them less likely to blow back out of the woods over the winter.
I would do a combo of mulching/dumping. I would aim my mulching mower into the woods and shoot them into the woods using the mower. I’m still confused as to why you bagged them first.
Fire
Burn them