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

 

[Thomas]

Years back On TBN gentleman took hand pull blower on wheels and adapted to 3 pt.hitch on platform,and if I remember right he wrote work well.

 

[PA hayseed]

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.

you piled them over winter and then put them on the garden in the spring? Howd that work for ya? I would think that it would take them longer to break down if piled than if spread out some. I was looking into getting a vac system to make some spare change, but mainly to get people's leaves to amend my soil.

 

[RedHawkRidge]

I use an Estate Rake, which is similar to a hay rake. You can find it thru Google. It is pretty effective at sweeping up the leaves into a windrow. Comes in two sizes. I have used both, and now have the larger version for a 4 acre site that has red oaks on the periphery.
If you've ever dealt with red oak leaves, you know they can last a couple of years before disintegrating. So I get them into windrows with the rake and then mow over them. The mowing fractures enough of the leaf to facilitate rotting. If I do it in late fall, most are gone in the spring. If I do it in spring, say early May, the leaves are gone by end of the month.
Jim

 

[NuBota]

I get a ton of leaves - heavily wooded 3 acres. I haven't tried the big vac setup yet, but have tried everything else. Bagging with the lawn tractor is painful - usually have to empty after a single pass - leaves don't get mulched up enough. Tried the landscape rake, but as others said - didn't work real well on uneven turf. Getting rid of the leaves was a chore as well - both raking and bagging - just piling them up down in the woods, they take forever to break down and most end up blowing everywhere else. One year I just dumped them in my 18' landscape trailer - filled the entire bed about 16 inches deep (after they started to compress) and ran it to the dump (recycled yard waste) - too much work.

I finally settled on a pretty good system. Run the LT in mulch mode for 2 weeks and bag the 3rd week picking up the excess. This leaves a good layer behind as mulch in the lawn, and creates much less volume when bagging. I just repeat this cycle until all the leaves are down. Mix the mulched leaves in with the grass clippings - makes great compost by the following summer.

 

[CHDinCT]

I have two acres of heavily wooded property. Started with an electric blower and a lot of extension cords (didn't have a lot of money back then), then graduated to a back pack blower (Echo PB), then a walk behind blower (Little Giant), and finally a leaf vacuum (Cyclone Rake) attached to my mower. Blowing was always a chore since it seemed the wind was never working with me and they never totally stay where you blow them. You only deal with them once when using a leaf vac and the mulch produced in a year or two is an extra benny.

 

[beenthere]

I've often thought that a leaf rake designed like a hay rake would work well for moving leaves, but figured the windrow of leaves would get large rather quickly. That would mean doing something with them either mechanically or by hand-carrying. Neither thought excited me.
Yesterday and today's wind of 50-55 mph has done a pretty good job moving my leaves away. There won't be much to do other than move into the areas where they have piled up.

I use a vac system of JD powerflo and MC519 cart.
Have used this cart now for 15 years and pick up leaves on about 6 acres of wooded lawn.

 

[wolc123]

I use (2) tractors for cleaning up leaves each fall and they always make short work of it. I just finished my lawn tonight and it took about an hour to clear 1.5 acres of heavily-tree'd manicured lawn. I use a 42" sweeper behind the first tractor (Wheelhorse 12hp gear-drive with mower deck removed). I run this tractor as fast as it will go, pulling the sweeper, dumping each time out back on a "rough" 2 acre area, never slowing down to dump, just pulling the rope. I end up with all the leaves out back, scattered on the rough, which I then push into a big compost pile using a light-weight, 4.5 ft snowplow on the front of my 10hp Farmall cub. That little plow and light tractor does a fairly good job on the leaves, causing little or no damage to the "rough" lawn and gathering up at least 90% of the leaves. It is nice to not deal with complicated, expensive machinery like vacuums, and to have all that compost available next spring. I have less than $25 invested in the garage-sale sweeper and the plow was free, and also works good for clearing light snows all winter. That 1 hour clearing leaves is something I look forward to each fall. The kids always have a ball playing in the big pile.

 

[fredhargis]

you piled them over winter and then put them on the garden in the spring? Howd that work for ya? I would think that it would take them longer to break down if piled than if spread out some. I was looking into getting a vac system to make some spare change, but mainly to get people's leaves to amend my soil.

It worked really well. I did 2 things, I would pile some on the garden and let them lay over the winter, till them in before planting in the spring. The second application was to pile some elsewhere over the winter, and after the plants were up in the spring, put a thick coat of wintered leaves around the plants. This helped keep the weeds down, and I didn't water so it helped retain moisture..then after the fist frost these leaves were tilled under until I piled on the fresh ones for another winter. I can tell you my garden soil was pitch black when we moved....and it was yellow clay when we started.

 

[ragkar]

Every year it seems that I rake a bit differently. I live in an oak tree grove and get lots and lots of leaves on my half acre front lawn. I think that it use to take about twelve hours to do it and now I have it down to two hours.
The procedure this year is to use a 42" lawn sweeper towed behind my lawn tractor (not mowing). I just circle the lawn, stop and pull on the rope to dump the leaves in front of my compost heap. After a dozen dumps I get on my JD tractor that has a snow plow (rubber cutting edge) and compact the piles. Then its more circles with the lawn sweeper. It takes about an hour to do this part.
The compost heap is a twenty foot diameter fenced circle of hardware cloth that is in the woods just off the lawn.
Phase two is to shred and mulch the leaves and blow them into the compost heap. This reduces the volume by a factor of six to one. I use a combination chipper/blower/mulcher for this operation. It has an eight inch hose for fetching the leaves.
When I've finished, the compost heap has shredded leaves two to three feet high. That's about 30 cubic yards of them mulched six to one. Lots of leaves.
Sometimes I think that I have a peculiar wind pattern that dumps most of the forest's leaves in my yard.