How to Dispose of Autumn Leaves
Ah, autumn, when the days are crisp and the weekends are filled with football, fun - and raking leaves for hours on end. Make raking leaves a little less work by getting smart and minimizing the effort. Your back - and your football buddies - will be glad that you did.
- Difficulty:
- Easy
Instructions
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Call your city or county manager or administrator's office to find out what rules and special assistance apply when disposing of leaves and yard waste. Some areas have special leaf pickup days when the municipality doesn't charge for collection. Some areas use special heavy leaf collectors that allow you to simply rake leaves into the street gutters for collection. And still others have special rules about bagging and collecting leaves and other yard waste.
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Check with your garbage-collection service, as well, if it's separate from the city or county. It may also have special yard-waste services or rules.
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Equip yourself well. New lines of leaf blowers and shredders have come onto the market recently that are lighter and easier to use. Leaf blowers are best if you have an easy way to collect the leaves, such as putting them into a pickup truck for dumping elsewhere. A vacuum leaf shredder is great if you want to compost or bag the leaves and need to collect the smallest volume possible.
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Get into smart composting, an earth-friendly way to get rid of a variety of yard wastes. Buy one of a number of compost bins on the market, or build one yourself out of wood or lightweight wire fencing. Or consider a compost pit: Dig a hole behind some shrubs or the garage and fill with autumn leaves.
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Spread small amounts of leaves on your vegetable garden - no more than 2 or 3 inches deep. Dig or till into the soil to prevent blowing and to break down the leaves faster.
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Mow over your leaves on the lawn to collect them in the bag attachment. The combination of high-nitrogen grass clippings and shredded, high-carbon leaves makes for a particularly good composting material.
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Rake autumn leaves into shrub plantings and perennial beds. The existing plants tend to prevent the leaves from blowing, and the leaves also serve as a winter mulch. (Just be sure to remove the leaves come spring.)
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Tips & Warnings
If some of that power leaf-disposing equipment is too expensive for your budget, consider going in with a neighbor or family member to buy it together. Just make sure to specify what happens to it if one person or the other moves. Or consider renting the equipment from your local rental company.
Don't just dump your leaves in a public area, ditch, field or landfill. You might get slapped with a fine for unlawful dumping or littering. Check with the property owner first.
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Comments
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kenl123
Jan 31, 2009
The simplest solution is to just mow over the leaves with a mulching mower. It chops the leaves into small pieces that stay in place and fertilize the lawn when they decompose. -
kenl123
Jan 31, 2009
The simplest solution is to just mow over the leaves with a mulching mower. It chops the leaves into small pieces that stay in place and fertilize the lawn when they decompose.
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Nov 22, 2005
To efficiently collect leaves in the fall, I wind row them with the mower; then rake them onto a 9x12 poly tarp. They are easy to load, easy to drag to the compost area, and easy to unload. Then I run over the leaves with the mower into the compost.
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Nov 22, 2005
I have a composting structure built like a log cabin using 4x4 posts in 8 foot lengths - with the spacing in between each "log" to permit air to flow and open on top for rain. It's about 5 feet high. Just jack up a lower log and dig out the compost.
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Nov 22, 2005
My yard is completely surrounded by a wooded area (all part of my property). I mow and rake all the leaves that fall into my yard right back into the wooded area (on top of the leaves falling there naturally). No muss, no fuss.
