Dealing with leaves on a scut

[RalphVa]

I had a neighbor once that swept and vacuumed his back deck.
I guess he didn't like leaf blowers.
He was out every possible weekend mowing his grass.
I could tell he hated when a few leaves from my property would sit up against the fence (on my side), caught him pulling the leaves through by hand.
I don;t think he talked to any other neighbors either.

Got a neighbor like that who's also a territorial rat. He's out in the fall with his back pack blower blowing leaves off his grass. He was even out rolling his grass the other day with the tractor. Guess he'd put down some seed. Only reason for rolling.

 

[CoyPatton]

YouTuber TTWT had a leaf rake structure that he demo. I do not remember the exact name, but videos were from this past fall. He showed it in action. Leaves were collected and pushed in piles.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

It was a Ventrac leaf plow

 

[Omega Woods]

I mow them up with my ZTR and Cyclone Rake. The Cyclone Rake may be the best money I’ve ever spent on an implement. We mow up 5 acres worth of leaves and get tons of the best compost/mulch known to man. Expensive and worth every nickel to me.

 

[John0829]

I wait until they are all on the ground then blow them into a pile then I use the FEL to move them. Works a lot better than I thought it would when the idea blew though the dust bowl in my head.

 

[cperky]

I appreciate all the replies! That leaf plow in the video above looks awesome. My main objective is to keep the leaves out of the house. They get tracked in constantly. It interrupts quality time at home listening to the lady of the house complaining about it. I’ve tried mulching them up with my Zt but it ends up tracking in worse.

 

[Tractor Time with Tim]

I appreciate all the replies! That leaf plow in the video above looks awesome. My main objective is to keep the leaves out of the house. They get tracked in constantly. It interrupts quality time at home listening to the lady of the house complaining about it. I’ve tried mulching them up with my Zt but it ends up tracking in worse.

The leaf plow really works well. Moves huge piles of leaves with ease!

 

[mwemaxxowner]

It's not too bad for me to blow mine into a strip across the back maybe 10' wide and 150' long or something like that. From there, I've been wondering how I can use my tractor. Or, if I can use a landscape rake to rake them all up into pile(s) and then get them up with the bucket. I have a garden I think I'll spread mine over this year and till them in.

 

[deezler]

I mulch them in my grassy yard and occasionally blow the edges into the forest too. But around my garage and driveway where I dont care about the grass bits so much, I just blow into quick rows, and scoop everything up with the front loader for transport to the compost pile.

 

[wolc123]

It seems to me that most people put far too much time, money and effort into dealing with leaves.

We have quite a few big old maple trees that dump tons of leaves in our yard each fall. They are great for shade, but the leaves could present a problem if not dealt with effectively. They must all be the same type, because usually all of the leaves are down over about one week.

Around 25 years ago, I picked up a 36" Craftsman leaf sweeper at a garage sale for $20. It always worked well, but it really shines behind one of my current lawn tractors (JD model LT-150). My brother in law gave me that 6 years ago. It wouldn't start after 13 years of hard use, and he bought a new machine. I bypassed the malfunctioning seat safety switch, and it has worked well for me ever since.

I remove the mower deck from that little JD, when pulling the leaf sweeper, which allows operation over deep leaves. Its hydrostatic transmission facilitates the continual perfect match of ground speed to conditipns.

Our lawn consists of a manicured 1 acre around the house and barn (where all the maples are and I mow as often as needed with finish mowers), and a "rough" 2 acres behind (that I cut once or twice a month with a big tractor and bush hog).

At the end of the week when the leaf's are all down, it takes me a couple of hours to get them all into one big pile at the back of the "rough". I hook the $20 sweeper behind the free LT-150. It fills up fast when the leaves are thick, but it dumps quickly back on the rough, just by pulling the trip rope and never even slowing down.

I dump the leaves in strips back there, averaging about 30 dumps before they need to be pushed into the pile with a snowplow on one of my larger tractors. This operation always occurs at the time of year when the plow should be on the tractor anyhow, so that is always handy and parked back there.

The snowplow does a terrific job of pushing up the 30 or so dumped loads of leaves, onto a pile back on the rough. Sure it misses a little and scrapes up a bit of sod, but no big deal back where no one can see it.

This cycle gets repeated several times, until most of the leaves, from up front, are in one big pile out back. That pile stays thru the winter. Each spring I use my front loader bucket on a big tractor to move it farther back onto a compost pile.

Our girls always loved "leaf day", and they would play in that big pile for hours when I finished pushing it up.