Turn Your Lawn Mower Into A Leaf Vacuum and Shredder
I consider the leaves of autumn to be one of the greatest and worst aspects of the fall season. On one hand I love to see the colors and feel the crispness in the air, but on the other hand I know I’ll soon have to spend every spare moment of sunlight on my weekends trying to rake and bag leaves just in time for my town’s leaf pickup dates.
The idea of buying a leaf vacuum has crossed my mind more than once, but I have hard time justifying the $400 and up pricetag for a piece of lawn equipment I’ll only use about 10 hours a season. Sure, most have chippers built in, but I live in the suburbs and I don’t regularly have bushes and trees to grind up.
I am, however, a big fan of multitasking tools.
Take, for example, my $150 gas powered lawn mower. Sure, it can cut grass during the summer months, but this year I also used it to save me hours and hours of work during the autumn. Here are the incredibly simple steps needed to turn your lawn mower into a leaf vacuum:
- Put gas in your lawnmower and raise it to the highest setting above the grass that is possible.
- Attach a grass catching bag.
- Start your lawnmower.
- Mow right over those leaves on your lawn.
That’s it! This will obviously work with a riding mower, too. The running blades of your mower should create enough of a vacuum to easily suck up any dry leaves. If your leaves are a little wet I’ve found that just raking the leaves once over in all directions kind of loosens the leaves from sticking to the ground. As a bonus the leaves are shredded with the blade before being shot into the collection bag.
Depending on the amount of leaves you may find yourself emptying your grass bag much more frequently than you normally would with grass clippings. I could usually get two passes with my mower before I had to empty my lawn mower bag into a paper leaf collection bag.
Why do you raise your mower to the highest setting? Your grass will come back thicker and more easily in the spring if you leave it a couple inches high over the winter months. You don’t want to cut your grass when you do this, you just want to suck up the leaves that are covering your lawn.
And after you’ve used your lawn mower as a leaf vacuum and you’re done for the season, don’t forget to winterize your lawnmower so that you can start it up again in the spring!
Comment by Richard Lim
Thanks for sharing the tips of your article “Turn Your Lawn Mower Into A Leaf Vacuum and Shredder.” It saves me money and time without buying another expensive leaf vacuum machine this fall.
Good job.
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[...] written about using your lawn mower to shred leaves and this season I bought and reviewed a chipper and leaf vacuum, but both of those methods [...]
Comment by Bob
The latest thinking is to use your grass mulching capabilities and run right over the leaves without bagging. The leaves decompose, adds nutrients and becomes soil in the long run. Contact your local agricultural extension service or any college/university turf program on line if you need to validate this info.
Start with a newly sharpened blade, clean under carriage and clean air filter. The blade will be cutting more matter than usual, removing caked grass underneath gives max mulching and dry leaves may make it a little dusty.
Consider different scenarios for the following subjective conditions while cutting the grass at the same time:
1.Dry/Damp Conditons and Crispy (e.g. oak)to Leathery (e.g. Norway maple) Leaves (light)
A. Keep mower at one level below summer setting
B. Walk/travel a little slower than usual to allow max mulching.
2. Dry Conditons and Crispy (e.g. oak) to Leathery (Norway maple) Leaves (medium to heavy)
A. Keep mower at summer setting or one above
B. Walk/travel slow to allow max mulching.
C. Go over again to mulch down
or
C. If you have 3 way mower, consider open side flap half way with stick and keep shute in the same direction “pushing leaves to lawn edge or make a pile
3. Wet Conditons - only Leaves (light).
- Do not cut grass.
- Do not use on any slopes. Wait for dryer conditions.
A. Keep mower at one setting above summer setting
B. Walk/travel slow to allow max mulching.
C. Go over again to mulch down
or
C. If you have 3 way mower, consider open side flap half way with stick and keep shute in the same direction “pushing” leaves to lawn edge or make a pile
D. Hose off undercarriage after cutting
4. Wet Conditons - only Leaves (medium to heavy).
- Use only if you have a 3 way mower
- Do not cut grass.
- Do not use on any slopes. Wait for dryer conditions.
A. Keep mower at highest setting
B. Open side flap half-way with stick and keep shute in the same direction “pushing leaves to lawn edge or make a pile
C. Walk/travel slow to allow max pushing/blowing.
D. Hose off undercarriage after cutting
Comment by Tom
Bob, I totally agree with you that ideally mulching your leaves and using them to add nutrients to your lawn is a good idea. However, there are some limits to how many leaves you can mulch before you just have too much.
About a year ago I actually ran a little experiment in part of my side yard (which is mostly out of view). I split my side yard in “two” with an imaginary line. On one half I purposely didn’t rake or pick up any leaves from that part of the yard, I only ran them over with a mower and mulched the leaves that fell. The problem I saw was that there were A LOT of leaves. I probably had 2 to 3 solid inches of crushed/mulched leaves in some parts of my side yard. On the other half I did rake the leaves away and did use a mower with a bag to remove most of the leaves.
Winter came, we had a few snow storms. Spring came and… the side of the yard with no leaves ended up faring much better. I simply had too many leaves in my yard to just mulch and leave them down. The side that had the 3 inches of crushed leaves just never really came back. I essentially ended up killing most of the grass in that area and by late spring I had to use my method for planting grass seed to reseed that part of the yard.
So maybe a compromise would be to rake and bag the leaves, or use a mower or even a chipper vac to remove most of the leaves in the early part of the autumn and then around late November or December just run your mower over the lawn once to grind up and mulch any remaining fallen leaves.
Thanks for the great detail on how to mulch leaves!