Anyone have a great tool for sucking up and bagging leaves? During this time of year the once a week lawn service isn't cutting it.

Are you mulching/composting? Never understood sending plastic bags of leaves to the landfill.

I'm on my second Toro blower/mulcher. I put the mulch in my compost bin or paper leaf bags. Full disclosure, the zippers on bags wear out pretty easily.

I currently don't mulch. I will start once we build our raised beds

Potcake said:

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I'm on my second Toro blower/mulcher. I put the mulch in my compost bin or paper leaf bags. Full disclosure, the zippers on bags wear out pretty easily.

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This?

I use that Toro in combination with an Ego blower. That way I'm not switching back-and-forth. But if you have a lot of leaves, that toro is pretty slow going. But it does a good job and really mulches the leaves down so you don't use as many bags but it's pretty slow

I have the ryobi. Didn't see a lot of options when shopping and already have the batteries so was leaning that way.

It's okay, not great. Little on the cheapish side qualitywise I think. Doesn't mulch that well. The bag is kind of crappy and blows a lot of dust around you. Does the job for me around the pool area,whixh was my goal.

That looks like an F-250 version of my F-150 but yea.

Get a Billy Goat. And I'm not talking about the animal.

https://www.billygoat.com/na/en_us/products/leaf-litter-vacuums.html


Edit to add link

WORX has two different kinds

I have an Echo Echo ES-250. I use it every week during the summer as a blower. However, as a vacuum on oak leaves it is barely adequate, It just doesn't move enough air for the purpose. I use it primarily as a blower and I use my kids to pickup the leaves.

dubi said:

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Potcake said:

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I'm on my second Toro blower/mulcher. I put the mulch in my compost bin or paper leaf bags. Full disclosure, the zippers on bags wear out pretty easily.

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This?

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I have that model and it's a big "meh..." We have 3 large oaks in our front yard, so we have plenty of leaves. I tried using it to suck up and mulch leaves (which it does), but it's not remotely fast. If you've got a small area or only one tree, it's probably not too bad. But for us, it's more work than it's worth.

The "quickest" way i found was to just blow/rake them into a central area then mow them up with the push mower and bag it.

mulch-improves the soil

I have that toro as well. It's good for flower beds, around trees, house, etc. It is too slow for yard. I do same as other poster, rake it into piles then mow over them. The boy is getting pretty good at raking so I finally have some help

I got the WORX and it works just fine for my turf back yard. I use a blower to push everything into one big pile vs. carrying that heavy thing around.

DeBoss said:

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I got the WORX and it works just fine for my turf back yard. I use a blower to push everything into one big pile vs. carrying that heavy thing around.

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I ordered the Worx and it arrives today. I mulched the main lawn with the Club Cadet over the weekend and will go around the fence / tree area this weekend.

I use my mower. Mow over everything on mulch once (twice if there's a lot of leaves), raise the front wheels up a notch, the open my mulch chute 1 or 2 settings. That way it mulches even more as it bags whatever isn't left behind.

We leave the mower grass setting high and have mulched the leaves with the mower the last two years. It doesn't seem like the leaves break down and the grass didn't grow as well the last two years. Does that make any sense?

rlb28 said:

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We leave the mower grass setting high and have mulched the leaves with the mower the last two years. It doesn't seem like the leaves break down and the grass didn't grow as well the last two years. Does that make any sense?

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My husband agrees that mulching, when you have lots of leaves, is hard on the lawn.

He has always raked the leaves, but rotator cuff surgery has him down right now.

rlb28 said:

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We leave the mower grass setting high and have mulched the leaves with the mower the last two years. It doesn't seem like the leaves break down and the grass didn't grow as well the last two years. Does that make any sense?

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I rake into a large pile, then run over them with the mower to "mulch", but I have the bagger attached. That way, it sucks up most of the leaves. I found it works a lot better if I set the mower at the same height of the grass rather than trying to raise it up some.

I do have to do a multiple passes, but I get about 90% of the leaves up without much of an issue.

We don't have a bagger; just the lawn tractor "mulching" blades. So a large amount of mulch would just sit in the grass where we have our mature oaks.

Use a rake! It's good exercise...

I have a cheaper Black & Decker electric... It's decent enough on concrete if the leaves are dry and there aren't any real twigs or sticks. Doesn't really do much on pine needles. Isn't powerful enough for the magnolia leaves.

I mow/mulch what I can, but I agree with others above. More than a certain quantity of leaves is hard on the lawn. When they're dead they're largely devoid of nutrients as the tree has used all it could before it cuts them loose. They are very high in tannins. If you have a compost bin they'll be alright in there, but I've found thick accumulations of leaves to ultimately be detrimental to my lawn.

My Snapper Hi Vac does a great job. I mulch during the summer but switch to bagging during this time of the year.

It chops them up pretty small and my neighbor puts them on his compost pile. I make several passes until it stops filling the bag.

I've had the Toro one too. It's ok but not as powerful (fast) as I would like. Rake them into piles...then bag it with a push mower.

dubi said:

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rlb28 said:

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We leave the mower grass setting high and have mulched the leaves with the mower the last two years. It doesn't seem like the leaves break down and the grass didn't grow as well the last two years. Does that make any sense?

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My husband agrees that mulching, when you have lots of leaves, is hard on the lawn.

He has always raked the leaves, but rotator cuff surgery has him down right now.

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If you have a good mulching blade on the mower, its always better for the lawn. During the winter in Texas, most grass is dormant so there is always the appearance that doing anything is hard on the lawn but it rarely is. My yards looked a lot better when I was caring for them and mulching. When I went to a lawn service and they started bagging, the lawn didn't look as good.

I'm going back to doing my own yards. Not looking forward to the hassle but I'm tired of my yard looking like crap. In my opinion, NOT mulching is hard on yards, especially in Texas.

I used to have a house with a large pine tree in front. The pine needles dropped year round. Even mulching those things were well accepted by the St. Augustine grass (which I hate, by the way), something I never expected nor understood. However, many regular lawn mowers that say they mulch have a cheap blade on them that doesn't do a good job. Go to a small engine shop and get a real mulching blade that will fit your mower.

Goal: remove leaves from lawn/etc. between weekly lawn care.
Lawn service, so assume no mower to mount a mulch blade = DIY lawn care after paying for it.
Not composting yet so no need for some tool that contributes to all that.

I was given a DIY stick & bag (ala Toro) leaf vacuum/mulcher and after spending a lot of effort, much work/time /sweat and NO FUN ... parked it in the storage shed with no motivation to fish it out ever.

As a kid, your goal was same as my Dad's, so we used a push wide-brush bagger only to have pickup problems, no fun sweat and then pro-advice that our trash was a gardener's gold. It broke and it was a happy day.

I like the ones that look like mowers, self-propelled, mulch into a bag but .... not your real goal, no compost pile, no pickup? but really ... anything close to $1000 for this duty doesn't seem to fit.

Raking is simple, cheap but even less fun than a brush-bagger and then where does it go?
Suggest piled at bases of trees or shrubs ... until that day the raised beds & compost heap arrive.

The most FUN that might be in budget would be a powerful leaf blower (battery power preferred = plug & blow, no cords) that would direct leaves to those tree & shrub bases. I got hooked into 18v Ryobi tools - there are better brands out there the pros prefer. It's EZ to justify a new tool when the battery/charger investment is in place.

I usually mow them up and either bag them or mulch them into the grass. I have a mulching blade, so you can use the mower bag and dump them in a compost pile.

Live oak leaves, I think you want to remove them from your lawn. Do not mulch into lawn.

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Live oak leaves, I think you want to remove them from your lawn. Do not mulch into lawn.

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I can ditto this, especially if it's a large amount. I once mulched a bunch of live oak leaves in one spot and I think it suffocated the grass/soil and wiped it out. It was too weak to handle any traffic and now it's just dirt.

My issue is there is no lawn in my backyard. It's covered patio, pergola area, gravel instead of grasss, and mulched beds.

They have to be removed and right now it's lawn service blowing and bagging.

Still have t found a good solution to do this quickly in between, especially on the patio. Fall/winter is coming again soon and I will be inundated with leaves

The toro vacuum/mulcher is the best solution I've found for live oak leaves. Our front "yard" just consists of a small-ish mulched area with 6 live oaks and other assorted plants. The oaks rain leaves all over the circle drive and in the mulched areas around the house.

The mulcher is faster and easier than blowing and scooping and allows me to get more into the green organics can on a weekly basis. It'd take me weeks to get rid of the leaves before because there were just too many.

Moving soon and thankful that I won't have to deal with this any longer. These oaks look nice and all, but they're a year-round beast on such a small lot. Right now it's acorn season…

HDeathstar said:

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I usually mow them up and either bag them or mulch them into the grass. I have a mulching blade, so you can use the mower bag and dump them in a compost pile.

Live oak leaves, I think you want to remove them from your lawn. Do not mulch into lawn.

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This. Live oak leaves do not decompose because of their waxy surface. If you mulch them into your lawn, they're just going to come choke it.

rlb28 said:

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We leave the mower grass setting high and have mulched the leaves with the mower the last two years. It doesn't seem like the leaves break down and the grass didn't grow as well the last two years. Does that make any sense?

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Do you have live or white oaks? Can't remember the source, but read somewhere that some oak leaves don't really decompose like other kinds.

I just use the blower around the perimeter of the yard and beds, get it all into the grass then bag it up with the mower. Kind of a pain but mowing is about the only regular exercise I get these days.

I know I'm repeating what's been said in several posts but mine are all live oaks and they definitely don't break down within a season and they do create a stifling mat if not raked up. I've had heavy live oak cover for 15 years at multiple residences and kept trying to mulch them with the mower. The mat buildup was visible but I was doing what I had read was best. It wasn't until I began raking a few years ago that my lawn really thrived.

For live oaks, if you want a really healthy lawn, blow the leaves out of the grass into wind rows. Mow those with a bag and dispose of the leaves.