I am struggling with your same problem. In fact, yesterday we spent $69 to rent a push lawn van/mulcher. We were told the mulcher in this machine would shred leaves down to 1/7 the volume the y were unshredded. Unfortunately, when we used it, the leaves came out of the collection bag nearly identical to how they went in. Even trying to go excruciatingly slow and vacuuming only dry leaves, made no difference. Fortunately, my husband was able to get our ancient, free-standing mulcher/shredder running and we were able to use that. That machine does a fabulous job of shrinking leaves into beautiful, fine mulching material. My shredder/mower also does a great job, but we don't have a bag attachment that fits (lost in the move, somehow). I would recommend a good mulching mower with a collection bag. If you have lots of leaves or a really big yard (or both, like me) a riding mower with an attached collection system is ideal. The system we've finally settled on is to power blow the leaves into huge piles and then set up the standing mulcher on a tarp near the pile and send the leaves through the mulcher with one person shoveling leaves into the machine and a second person using the safety stuffer to push the leaves into the machine and keep it from getting clogged. With dry leaves, we mulched for a few hours straight with out a clog. And we're mulching heavy oak leaves. These are going directly onto my flower beds right out by the road, and they look very nice.

The biggest problem with most of the available systems on the market (in my opinion) is that they either don't shred leaves fine enough, or the collection bag is way too small. I have seen some professional companies with the stand-on riding mowers and a large hose that carries the mulched grass or leaves up into a garbage can that sits on top of the mower engine. I've not seen how fine the leaves get shredded, but that size of collection container seems better. I don't know how easily those are emptied.

Another option we considered was to hire someone to do a fall clean-up for us and use their industrial strength machines to shred my leaves and pile them where I told them to. I didn't get as far as pricing that option, but that would solve all the issues of equipment storage and maintenance and dependence on the weather and my schedule, etc. As I get older and stiffer, that option makes more and more sense. The appropriate equipment is out their, but it's too expensive for people like you and I who just have one yard to care for.

I hope this has helped. Before you buy anything, make sure you see it in action. If I had time to plan ahead and put aside a few hundred dollars, I'd hire the job out. I'm sure you could even have someone come weekly for the month of October (in my zone, anyway) and keep the leaves from getting too thick on the lawn. Good luck.

Martha

I was given a Black and Decker leaf vac/ mulcher at a yard sale and I LOVE IT(so do my neighbors)!!
The neighbors have poplars which drop a lot of twigs, and those will clog the machine from time to time, but for the most part, I'm very happy with it! The leaves get broken down to about an inch or so. They look nice and neat on the garden beds. Nancy

If you have the money or get lucky like I did. A pull behind leaf vacuum works great.

I bought a D.R. vac for $700 that was only one year old from a widow. It retails for about $2,600. I was about to buy one from Tractor Supply that retailed for $1200, on a coworkers recommendation. He has one and it does great too.

It shreds the leaves very small but they don't compact down and smother the soil.

You may have a small yard and it may be too expensive. I have over an acre of leaves with huge oak and hickory trees that I have to get up. It has paid for itself in labor alone. Plus my garden is getting better and better!

Keep a watch on Craigslist and estate auctions, you might get lucky too!

I am using a bag lawn mower to gather grass,(dry & green)weeds, falling leaves.
I am mulching my Winter Greens, the collards will last at least 3 years. So this will be my second try at a no-till bed. The first bed is covered in perennial grasses.

I just use lawn mower- pick up with the bagger, works pretty good. I don't know why anyone would rake when you can accomplish two jobs at once.

I've got the Black and Decker blower/vacuum. If you only have a few trees this should work great. I have had it about 6 years and am happy with it. You need to work out the best method for hanging the bag over your shoulder as you work for best efficiency. I'd estimate the pieces are about 1/2' to 3/4'.

Here is a link that might be useful: blower/vac

Well, for lawn areas, I'll usually be just mulch-mowing them back into the lawn right as they sit...this would be more for beds, paved areas, etc.

If you are looking at tow behind units, I've used a Cyclone Rake for picking up leaves and acorns with the vacuum hose but unless it is attached to the mower, it does very little shredding itself.

Lloyd

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I ended up moving to a small yard and was looking at the blow/vac shred things. The advice I got was get one with a metal impeller - not plastic.

Through circumstances I ended up buying an electric stand up shredder thing, an Eco Shredder 1600. Works fine. Reduces the volume a lot. I am out there raking leaves once a week but I guess I can put up with that in a small yard. When I burn out the eco shredder, I'll go for the blow/vac for this small yard.

The mulcher mower worked great when I was only mulching but when I went to mulch and bag not so hot. Most mulcher mowers work by creating a vortex that cycles the material through the blade action at least three times but if you're bagging the stuff, the egress to the bag breaks the vortex and stuff only passes the blades once. I also mow my grass high so that mucks up the mulching vortex too. I tried looking for a good mulching mower but there's a dearth of information on that particular feature. I guess I should have gotten the gumption to try renting out mowers from different places.

Still, I used to rake leaves onto the lawn before mowing so the mower would chop them some and mix the leaves up with the grass clippings saving me that effort. Most of the time, that was good enough.

to sense
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One thing to remember if whatever you have doesn't shred fine enough: you can pile whole leaves on, as long as the top layer is something that will hold it down till the leaves settle in. So you can shred part of your leaves and use the shreds on top of whole leaves. Or use grass clippings, grass/leaves from the mower bag, etc.

Of course, the holy grail is curbside bags of someone else's finely shredded leaves!

I don't think too small particles will be a problem. My shredder, older Troy-Bilt chipper shredder shreds leaves to about 1/12" or 1/16", and that has worked fine for my compost piles. Most chipper/shredders will not go that fine. And some have the output size determined by different size screens which can be ordered (hopefully) if another size is desired.

But that was for stationary machines, and you mentioned vacs. So a moving type shredder vac may not be as flexible. The guy down the street has a Sear shredder mower vac, and the output is rather large. Like me running over the leaves once, maybe twice with my regular Sear push mower.

Take your time and check out used equipment as well. If any of the neighbors have stuff, ask if you can work with them some weekend for an hour or two. I started with a stationary Troy-Bilt chipper/shredder for two years. Did not like it until I tried a Sears model. But that had a intake which could be lowered to ground level. Nice if leaves were small and dry for older folks who could not bend down much. But I preferred the Troy-Bilt myself. After the engine on that went, bought a no-name model with a new engine, which was worthless.

Each to his own.

I have a blower/vac/bagger and it's one of the best things I ever bought. Blowing, vaccuuming and bagging is much easier than raking and bagging by hand, that's for sure. And it shreds the leaves to good composting size. When I get leaves from neighbors's yards, I shred them before composting. And don't worry about a plastic impeller unless you want to shred woody material. I've never had a problem over the last 8-10 years.

I have a Toro lawn mower/mulcher and a sling-over-the back electric blower/vacuum for my less than 1/2 acre lot. Those work just fine in picking up and shredding my mostly maple leaves. But after I fill up my three 3x3x3 ft compost bins and cover the perennial beds in the backyard with chopped leaves I fill up large leaf bags for the town to pick up. I noticed that you need to compress the leaves in leaf bags several times, most people do not seem to do that.

One number you might look at when comparing equipment is the reduction number. Many stationary shredders and mower shredders will advertise a number like 8:1 which suggests that 8 cubic feet will reduce to 1 cubic volume after going thru their machine. I like my leaves to be very fine shredded for composting, so I would prefer a number of 15:1 or 20:1 over a lower number like 8:1 or 10:1. Some of the more larger, expensive, and versatile machines may offer different screens with various size holes. These would have the ability to be changed, and the output could be adjusted for users wishes.

I use the TORO leaf vac/blower with the bag. I admit I am a little anal about making sure the leaves are shredded fine, so I vacuum up a bagfull and then dump that same bag out and revacuum them up! They come out even more finely shredded. In other words the more you vacuum them up the finer the shredding! Works great too! It is a little bit of work but to me it's worth every leaf :) I just vacuumed up about 36 bagfulls of whole leaves into 9 bags of finely shredded leaves!