LEAVES!!!

[MossRoad]

4 acres of heavy leaves like that is a lot. That's what happens when you want the forest floor to look like a lawn. :laughing: I would just get a PTO blower and blow them to an area of the yard that you could designate for the leaves to just sit and rot on their own. If there are too many to blow, then just blow them into windrows and use your FEL bucket to push the rows to the back of the property. Personally, I used our power angle snowblade to push leaves that I windrowed with a blower. It worked great.

 

[EE_Bota]

Of all the solutions I've seen, I'd like the cyclone rake the best I think.
But currently, I am using the bagger system on my JD rider. I pull a little wagon behind that, and I dump the bags into the wagon once, and refill the bags, and then dump the lot.

You have to get into a Forest Gump state of mind to use my system. It's pretty, the weather ain't bad, Jenny left, and all that.

 

[ShaleniFarm]

Trac Vac....

I have one and it is great. You'd have to empty quite a few times, though. Lots of models to choose from, Trac Vac Outdoor Lawn Vacuum, Leaf Vacuum & Grass debris Lawn Vac

Have a good one.

 

[MarkV]

I like the free fertilizer so I just would mow them.

MarkV

 

[MossRoad]

Mowing that many leaves and leaving them on the lawn will kill the grass. One or two trees is one thing, but the original poster has a forest.

 

[JB4310]

Yup, and if you chop em up they are impossible to blow later.

JB

 

[TNTractor1]

Well I must admit, there isn't much lawn under most of the leaves. It's semi wooded, but not wild. I want to keep it somewhat manicured or at least not overgrown. I think I will just take it a little at a time, blow away what I can and mow what's left. Would burning piles of leaves be a bad idea?

 

[EE_Bota]

It gets dark pretty early now, and I used my blower to get more leaves on the grass than I could possibly get moved before dark yesterday.

Here is what I did:

I put on the discharge blocker (to make the deck be in mulch mode) and I mowed over all the leaves and ground them up into bits. Then I put my bagger chute on and remowed the area in bagger mode, thereby getting all the larger bits back off the grass. That worked well, since the leaves left in the grass are pretty well chopped and will decompose quicker. But the vast majority of the stuff that was still sort of large got picked up by the bagger.

I do have a dethatcher, so if this is found to be a detriment, I can mostly undo by busting the stuff back out of the turf. But this saved me countless trips yesterday. I think it probably reduced the bag empty trips something like 10-1.

This can't be done repeatedly, since there is a limit as to what the grass can take up, but having the leaves mostly chopped makes it easy to hold far more in the bagger. There is a decrease in effectiveness at picking up the leaves once chopped, though, so all this has to be balanced.

 

[chopped]

My opinion , and I have a similiar situation, is I just rake some close to the house for the winter. I know in the spring ill be raking them again , I leave the others on the 'lawn' and out in the thinned trees land. Maybe mow them over in the fall. But in the spring I re mow them. within a coule of mowings they are gone. they become fertilizer to the 'lawn'' So other that a leafy look to the 'tree lawn'' Its not much effort.
You cant have a manicured lawn with alot of trees without alot of raking etc..

 

[jmurray01]

Wow - Leaves indeed!

I'd buy one of those Garden Vac contraptions you can attach to the back of a Ride on Lawn Mower, they seem to work well...

I will echo what the others have said though, I think your trees may be a little bit worse for wear...