Do You Rake Leaves After They All Fall or Do You Rake More Than Once?

[disney junky]

Heading back out to rake/blow leaves, phase 3 and final phase for 2017....

No mention of southern states or HOA's allowed....

 

[Gumbo4x4]

I don’t rake. I just buzz them with the mower at my house. At Mom & Dad’s, it’s a combo of mowing & blowing. My nephew helps out (my parents are snowbirds, so they are gone by the time the leaves fall).

 

[Hikergirl]

I try to wait to wait so I only have to do it once. I will usually do a couple mows after the leaves fall, then one weekend of raking/blowing and mowing and be done with it all.
This year I have put off doing that one last weekend so I have tons of leaves in some places. Now it's too cold that I don't want to do anything. Maybe the snow will just cover them soon

 

[Mizzoufan]

We don't rake don't them at all. Yes we are those neighbors. lol

 

[lynxstch]

I mow over the first batches that fall. When the majority of the trees are done, I blow them all into a huge pile, and take them to the garden, spread them out and let them rot out there as mulch

 

[SingingMom]

We have "people"......

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

Our previous home was surrounded by huge old maple trees. Lots of leaves! We bought a mulching mower and DH would go out and mow over them once or twice a week. By Spring, all the chopped up leaves had disintegrated!

 

[xlxo]

A combination of the above....

• mower to mulch it up so it takes less space in the leaf bags.
• rake every few days to fill a few leaf bags (looking for dry days). After a few days, the leaves will dry and compost to a much smaller volume and I can fill more into the same bag.
• I use an quiet cordless electric leaf blower twice a day to touch up on the sidewalks. Push the leaves off the sidewalks onto the grass until I have time to rake. Takes 30 seconds to do my sidewalk and my neighbors. If the leaves are wet.... the blower helps to dry them a bit before lifting them onto the grass. You still need to rake 'n bag, otherwise it just means more to blow the next time. Thank-you Ryobi. BTW..... if one blower is too slow, it's done super quick when you have two blowers (one in each hand).

Once the leaves are gone... the next thing we will be clearing is snow and ice.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

I mowed once picked up once and now hopefully will wait till end to donagain.

 

[Kitty 34]

Our yard is filled with maples, walnuts and a giant oak so right now DH is out for the 5th and probably final time. He uses everything from a rake, blower, to his rider with that leaf catcher thing on the back.

 

[NAB]

I go out a few times, or they just blow away ....

 

[Cirlonde]

We live in a newly built neighborhood...we have one young tree in the front yard. The leaves usually all fall off over the course of a week or two and the wind merrily blows them all away within a week after that. It's one of the few times that I'm ever glad to not be surrounded by a bunch of fully grown trees.

Does that mean I can technically claim that we use a blower on our leaves?

 

[MIGrandma]

We don’t rake, we mow them and mulch them.

 

[mom2rtk]

My husband will eventually rake/mow them, but it's an endless job. The trees dropped them late this year, so it's worse. Of course the trees dropping those leaves are all in the neighbor's yard, and he won't rake a thing. So we're not in a hurry, knowing that his will keep blowing over this way.

The neighbor on the other side has a couple of giant oak trees. Those suckers won't completely drop until January or February. Not very fun raking that time.

But I will say that for a couple weeks in the fall, our street is absolutely glorious!

 

[Mirielle]

We have a huge sycamore tree in the front yard. If you don't rake, the leaves stick together after a rain and become slick...so slick you'll fall. We've yet to find a blower that can handle the job, so we have a yard man that comes weekly in the summer and twice a week in the fall to rake.

 

[punkin]

We have "people"......

This.

 

[cabanafrau]

We have to do them incrementally because they would pile up so thickly it would be very unpleasant to deal with, or very ugly to look at all winter & then try to resurrect the lawn underneath in the spring. We mulch most up with the mower and use them to cover beds in the far back of our yard and under the lilacs behind the shed. Sometimes on the really heavy weeks we have to mulch them first with the mower and then go over them again to pick them up in the bag. Until DH bought a new lawn mower a few years ago we did bag a lot up for pick-up. The heavy weeks generally left us with 14-18 bags. The new mower now mulches that heavy load down to 3 lawn mower bags that get dumped out back.

 

[kimblebee]

We rake them when they’ve pretty much all fallen. We don’t leave them because they get mouldy under the snow and the yard is gross in the spring.

 

[cedricandsophie]

My landscapers do it at least twice. We have a lot of trees on a large lot. I’m blessed to say I don’t own a rake!

 

[jliehr]

I drop a 12 by 12 tarp and blow as many leaves into it as I can, load it in the truck, rinse and repeat 3-4 times and am done. Takes about 2 hours, the first year at the house we raked and then bagged, 33 bags and something like 12 hours out in the yard, never again with bags.