Leaf mulcher

[autococker04]

Every year I have an enormous volume of leaves that fall in my yard compounded with wind patterns that carry neighbors leaves to collect around one of the walls of the house.

when I first moved in, I raked everything onto tarps and dragged it into the nearby woods, thinking that leaves go in the woods. Wrong. Not a week later no trespassing signs were posted next to my leaf dump and they remain there to this day.

so for the past few years I’ve been raking the leaves into a pile and lawn mowing them into oblivion, then raking the leaf dust into a garden bed to make better dirt.

I don’t mind the composting option, but my mower often stalls in the thick piles of leaves and I don’t want to damage it. Does anyone have any experience with these leaf mulching machines? It basically looks like a funnel that feeds into a weed whacker, and the mulched leaves drop into a trash can. They’re all over FB market place for $25-50 so I’m thinking of picking one up and giving it a try but hate adding tools that only do one thing to the garage unless they’re really worth it.

[mercpb]

If the question is do they mulch leaves --- sure they do, it's pretty much what you'd expect. Watch out for rocks, sticks, and wetness.

The real factors are what you've alluded to already.
1. How bad do you want to replace your current process
2. how much better would THIS process be, and
3. How problematic is having this big R2D2 taking up dead space for 11 months.

I've been on the fence for years myself, I pack ~20 bags for collection and it just seems wasteful. I could fit one in my attic I bet.... maybe time to think on that again.

[iamthelazerviking]

I went ahead and paid to get the two trees that shed the most leaves removed. Well worth it! Just two in th front yard, not massive but still big enough. They were close to house and had hollow limbs due to being trimmed wrong many moons ago. Less leaves blowing into tjr neighbor's yards, and no more front yard raking.

But I did attempt to use one of those vacuum mulcher/blower combo things. It had good reviews, and I was in the same boat as you. It was LOUD. It worked, but the bag the mulch goes into filled up way too fast. It didn't like twigs. Returned it and went the lawnmower route.

I'm sure there's better options like the standalone mulcher like you pictured.

[BrickHaus]

I used to dream of designing a leaf mulch/ incinerator.

I've since purchased an ego electric mower. I si.ply mow and bag weekly through the fall months. It's like a leaf vacuum.

[autococker04]

You could probably get a serious furnace going blasting leaf dust through a pipe into a drum with coals haha

[boomersruckus]

Someones inner pyro-maniac is waiting to add their contribution to this discussion.

[autococker04]

Sadly, I’m too city for a burn barrel, too suburban for waste management leaf vacuuming. Not even a dozen houses down, the township changes and those neighbors can take their leaves to the curb where a big vacuum comes and sucks them up weekly in the fall.

[BrickHaus]

I think you just found your solution my dude.. take your leaves to 13 houses down and dump em on the curb.

[BrickHaus]

Now that I'm on lunch break. Lemme explain my vacuum logic. It all comes down to handling them the least.

Let's take your desired approach. Raking into a pile is one operation. Then lifting them upinto the shredder barrel is two. Then you need to bag from there to make it 3 handlings of every leaf in question.

How I used to do it was rake, mulch the pile, rake again, bag. That's 4 operations.


I attempted to simply mow them up like a vacuum. This works, but I need to treat it like a weekly occurance of mowing my lawn to keep the pile manageable.


It's that, or I let the pile get ugly. Then I mulch it where it lies. Then I mow with a bagger. This method maximizes the leaf density in the can as I bag. And makes it 3 operations. Mulch, mow, dump.

All that being said. I am suburban enough to have the lawn and leaf service at my house. I can bring unlimited leaf bags to my curb weekly, and they get taken on garbage day.

I really think that mulch barrel would just add a ton of time to your leafing man. You can only feed so many I to it st a time and it's gonna make a cloud of dust in the process.

[autococker04]

That’s kind of where I’m at now, and it does work. I blow/rake them into a pile then make laps around the pile with the mower, only taking like 4-5 inches of the pile at a time but spiraling inward. Sometimes when they’re all mulched I run them over one more time with the bag on the mower, but that ends up taking as long as just raking the mulch over to the garden.

I like the idea of blowing them up the street to the neighbors who get pickup the best haha.

[boomersruckus]

Have kids, let them pile up over the 7 years it takes for the kids to become hardy, then have the kids do it!. You only have to put in work for one night and be patient. But as we all know, paintballers are a patient as severly ADHD kids with no meds hyped up on candy, redbull, and friday night!

[BLachance75]

I drive my mower around the yard and mulch the leaves. Then I attach a lawn sweeper and go around again, mulching more and sweeping the small pieces. When the sweeper is full I dump it into piles in the back of my yard. Luckily I was able to dump them behind the fence.

[autococker04]

Sounds like a pretty universal consensus that I should continue to mow them into oblivion. Floor space for storing it is probably the biggest deciding factor. Space is at a premium in the garage.

[Siress]

That's a tool for a problem that was already solved. Just be sure to use a mulching mower/blade for the task and to shut off all of the ejection ports (side ejection and bagging holes covered) and the mower will do the job quite well. Even if you plan to bag the mulched leaves, do a pass or two without bagging to get a fine mulch going first.

[Jonnydread]

I usually do the mow-mulch, but this year I'm just leaving 'em be on the non-walkway areas of my lawn. Will report yard/garden comparison next year.

[Siress]

I tried that a few years ago... Killed all of the grass. Had to clear partially decomposed leaves and seed the lawn...

[Jonnydread]

Siress I’m anti grass, that won’t deter me and my giant bag of creeping thyme seeds

[SignOfZeta]

I’m confident I have more leaves than any of you. I have a dozen century+ old trees in my yard and so do all my neighbors. I don’t care about a “nice lawn” by any means but naturally I don’t want dead areas so the goal is simply to make sure light can hit the grass everywhere.

The method eventually decided upon is to mow and mow and mow until mowing no longer works. Then add the bagger. This is a 20HP John Deere with power feed bagger. It does the job but there is occasionally blockage. Lower grade stuff will be much harder to use. You learn how not to plug it up by first pluging it up 100 times.

Then what’s left goes onto a giant pile of mulch chaos out back.

As long as the leaves aren’t so thick they block the sun then just leave them. Americans waste an absolutely stupid amount of time and effort on yard stuff. Don't be part of it.

[SignOfZeta]

That's a tool for a problem that was already solved. Just be sure to use a mulching mower/blade for the task and to shut off all of the ejection ports (side ejection and bagging holes covered) and the mower will do the job quite well. Even if you plan to bag the mulched leaves, do a pass or two without bagging to get a fine mulch going first.

If he’s having problems stalling the mower I really don’t think giving the poor thing even harder work is going to help.

Also configuring things is a huge PITA and if I was into this sort of thing I’d rather have two mowers than switch back and forth.

I agree that the device shown is probably not a great idea. It’s work to load it and then it just dumps it all on the ground again. It almost certainly doesn’t completely shrewd the leaves on the first time through so you’ll have this pile of leaves with this thing in the middle, reloading it with the same leaves over and over until they are mulched…then you have to pick it all up again to get rid of it. And for the price of two pizzas? It probably breaks half way into the job. It might be kind of OK for one of those HSA houses but not for anything approaching nature.

[Siress]

First of all, SignOfZeta what kind of bougie pizza are you getting for $25? Secondlt, send pictures.

[SignOfZeta]

It’s 2025. Two pies from Cottage Inn with breadsticks and a 2 liter is like $48 to my house. I max tip.

At my favorite place, Pizza House, for $50 you probably can’t get two pizzas…those things are like 1200 calories a slice though and the place is 20 minutes each way. It mainly serves alumni and other out of towners who aren’t checking the price on anything. True townies have a chip on their shoulder about Pizza House for various reasons present and historical and I sort of see why but it’s not a thing I care about since I’m not from here and if it weren’t for the GD MF-ing football games that I hate more than anything Pizza House wouldn’t exist. They deliver until 4:00am, pizza, ice cream, beer, whatever, all of it quality. Thats a thing of true cultural significance and worth overpaying for.

California Pizza kitchen, purchased in a Target…thats like $8.