Mowing a lawn on a dry day leaves it neat. If you have trees or flowers that shed leaves plenty, the tidy look of the lawn fades by the next morning. Here, you’ll learn handy tips on how to pick up the leaves from your lawn.
Picking up leaves from your yard or lawn with a mower works well, especially if you have a significantly large portion to clear.
There are immense benefits of using a mower. If you have a mulch-mower, it’s best for you. A mulch-mower is very effective and shreds the leaves into very tiny pieces, and it also spreads them across the yard. The tiny pieces of the ground leaf-remains camouflage into the blades of the grass on the lawn.
Mulch-mowing not only makes your lawn tidy for you but makes provides materials for mulching from the leaves (and grass cuttings). If the leaf-cover is unusually thick, you run the mulch mover twice over the surface.
In any case, while using a mulching mower, you have two options:
One is leaving the grass and leaf-remains to act as mulch.
The second is collecting the mowings using a mower bag. It holds the contents as you clear the yard. Afterward, you can empty the leaf-remains onto either other lawns or use them for composting material.
Tips on Seasons and Picking Leaves from Your Yard
Always avoid allowing the leafy mess to be engulfed by the onset of winter. Your frequencies to tidy up should be very high right before the onset of winter.
When you clear the lawns before winter, you significantly reduce the number or volume in leaf-cover on the grass on the lawns. Your key benefit is reducing the clutter and rot that comes along.
In case winter sets in and finds heavy leaf cover, it reduces the opportunity of sun penetrating in and reaching the grass blades. If the same mess remains until spring, you’ll find the same mess as at the onset of winter but with more pathetic states of putrefaction.
So in total, leaving the lawn messy right before and through winter will give you more work – cleaning up everything
Leaf picking from the lawn, apart from raking or using a mower, you can also use a leaf blower. Mulch-mowing is a great and environmentally friendly choice. You end up recycling a significant portion of the nutrients taken up from the soil by the lawn grass’s roots.
The beneficial aspect of mulch-mowing is you may not buy new equipment entirely. Modifications of your mower will be beneficial enough for mulch-mowing instead if done well.
In most cases, local authorities rule that waste, including leaves from your yards and lawns, are collected and bound in containers or bags where service providers collect them for ultimate disposal. While it works, you lose on the benefits with mulch and ready materials for composting.
Mulching allows you to collect leaves with a mulcher- saving you on time, money, and the environment.
Plain raking and collecting in bags will overwork you, especially with the many runs to empty the raking into disposal places.
Advantages of Mulch-Mowing
In case you go for the option to make compost from your yard or lawn, here are the good notes:
The grass you mow and collect from the yard is rich in nitrogen. When you combine it with leaves, you have the raw material for composting. Leaves contain carbon, and together with the nitrogen from the grass clippings, you can make very rich compost.
The compost you get from the grass and leaves is a great starter for your lawns at the start of spring. It can help you reduce your budgets for fertilizers to a great deal – do very little or no mineral fertilizers at all.
However, you can also entirely choose to leave the clippings on the yard. They’ll disappear into the grass blades. For the first option, allow your mulch-mower to work with the side discharge. Alternatively, you can use a mulch bag.
Note: When using the mulch bag, it works best if your leaves are moist or the grass tall and wet.
On the other side, if you plan to mulch directly, you leave the mulching bag off your mower. Allow the mulching to discharge along the side of your mower to form a long row as you mow-mulch.
Do another round, this time along the row you made from your first mow this time- shrink the mulching finer and, of course, attach the bag to collect every bit of the mulching.
Pro-Tip: You can mow-mulch in circular motions to shrink the mulching finer before attaching the mulching bag onto the mower to collect everything.
It helps you reduce the mulching, and you’ll end up using one or two mulch-bags in an instance where 3 or 4 would work in ordinary cases. Again, the finer your mulching is, the better for your composting materials.
Wet or Dry Leaves – Which is best for Mulch-Mowing?
It’s best if you bag the clippings for leaves that are dry to slightly wet.
In case the leaves are too wet, they clog your mower, which works against your maintenance schedules.
When done with collecting everything, ensure you clean your mower off the clogging. Use a large tarp towards one edge of your lawn where you empty everything.
Finally, roll up the tarp and empty the contents at your place of choice- compost pit or curbs for waste collectors to pick them. In case you had a mower on the mulching bag, it’s easier to empty that straight away.
Helpful Tips for Shopping for a Good Mulching Mower
Here are the tips to guide you in getting a great mulch-mower to help you pick leaves from your yard/lawns:
First, get a mulch-mower that is rear-wheel driven plus self-propelling.
Why?
Mowers by themselves are very heavy, and even heavier while carrying loads of clippings along. Ideally, pick one that’s strong and able to self-propel all along. More so, rear-wheel driven ones have better traction and weight distribution while mulch-mowing.
Second, pick one with a high-lift for the mulching blade. Standard mowers will let you down with this. The mulcher has blades with serrations along the edges plus shaping that adequately directs the air into the collection bag.
Third, look out for high-quality bags that have dust blocking ability. They help you from choking as you mow and mulch.
Conclusion
Picking leaves with a lawnmower is a great way to clear up the lawn fast and in a very beneficial way.
An ordinary lawn mower is not the best option for you. It’s best if you pick a mulcher. A mulcher is special, and you have options to use a mulch-bag or not. Either way, you can mulch the leaves and allow the clippings to be distributed on the grass. Alternatively, pick the mulching with the help of mulching bags.
With a mulcher, you can combine the grass collections after mowing with leaf-clippings from the mulcher to make very rich compost. The compost helps you awesomely benefit from waste. Good compost helps you save on mineral fertilizer needs for your lawns
While you watch out for conditions to do the mulching from the leaves on your yard, look out for a dry day. The leaves are best when dry, though a little wet one will work too.
