Hay Rake for Leaves

[shane]

Has anyone ever used a hay rake for leaves? Would it work? I have 5 acres that is mostly wide open but surrounded by trees that dump a great deal of leave each fall was wondering if this might be a possibility.

 

[ragkar]

No, but I tried using a York lawn rake behind my tractor. It didn't work too well. Set too low and it would gouge divots out of the lawn. Set too high and it wouldn't work at all.
About the only success that I had was letting the leaves accumulate so that they were a heavy layer. That is covering the green completely. Then the leaves would accumulate before the rake and act as a plow pushing more leaves before them.
Last year I had more success dragging a lawnsweeper behind my lawn tractor. But for final touch I had to get out the blower and hand rake.

 

[zzvyb6]

The problem with a rake is that the tines are too far apart. I suppose you could triple the tine spacing but the cost would still only provide windrows of leaves.

The 'best' solution IMHO is to use a vacuum + a collector trailer attached to a mower. Leaves are not that dense so you need the combined chopping effects from the mower blades and the vacuum impeller. That produces a fine mulch that will slowly burn when you dump it (or whatever you want to do with it).

My next trailer vac design will be a burn-on-the-fly version. The blast effect was proven when I once ran over a smoldering pile with my mower and vac. A bit hard on the paint but the smoke effect was terrific !

Leaves began runnig over to the neighbors....

 

[BeeferMan]

Rotary rake would do the job. When I clean up the fields last time I get plenty of leaves in the bales from the out side row. The trick is probably to use a PTO driven rake so you can increase the number of times the tines sweep the ground.

 

[Duffster]

Has anyone ever used a hay rake for leaves? Would it work? I have 5 acres that is mostly wide open but surrounded by trees that dump a great deal of leave each fall was wondering if this might be a possibility.

We have a hydraulically driven rake that would work, not sure about ground driven.

 

[Dozernut]

Why don't you put mulching blades on your mower and mulch the leaves. I have a large wooded yard that takes days to rake. I tried the mulching (Gator) blades and have never looked back. I have them for the ZD, just block the mower deck exhaust port and it chops the leaves up very fine plus an added benefit the leaves scour clean the underside of the mower deck.

 

[CompactTractorFan]

No, but I tried using a York lawn rake behind my tractor. It didn't work too well. Set too low and it would gouge divots out of the lawn. Set too high and it wouldn't work at all.
About the only success that I had was letting the leaves accumulate so that they were a heavy layer. That is covering the green completely. Then the leaves would accumulate before the rake and act as a plow pushing more leaves before them.
Last year I had more success dragging a lawnsweeper behind my lawn tractor. But for final touch I had to get out the blower and hand rake.

I wondered about using a York rake (landscape rake)...

 

[doall]

use a match.

 

[fredhargis]

After twenty years (we have now moved put of the woods) of trying just about everything to make life with leaves easier, I settled on a vac/trailer combo pulled behind the lawn mower. Nothing worked as well, and it allowed me to pile the leaves for storage, after setting through the winter I used them on the garden. I bought the Mow N Vac in 1995 and used it since then, left it with the house for it's new owner.

 

[SPYDERLK]

On thick leaves around the edges of field next to forest I have used a ground driven 4 bar hayrake to windrow - then sq bale. You can get a lot if theyre damp but its hardly sufficient due to the high % missed. I got a Trac Vac to pull behind the BX and havent looked back. Gets nearly all and you can dump them anywhere you want them. I just wish the dump trailer/was bigger.
larry