Spread a tarp over them until you can shred them to keep them from blowing around. I'm assuming if you can't buy equipment, you probably can't rent a shredder. Otherwise, I'd suggest renting a shredder.

Deanna

Clumsy,

Do you have a weedwhacker? You can put the leaves in a big plastic trash barrel, cut a hole in the lid big enough to get the weedwhacker through, and use that to shred the leaves. Just stick it in there with the leaves and rev it up.

You can also sheet compost them, which is what I do to make leaf mould. I lay them down over the ground and cover with burlap, and it holds the piles of leaves in place over the winter while they break down some. You can hold the burlap down either with stones or those big metal staples for landscape fabric. You can lift the burlap off in the spring and it will continue to decompose if you put it in your compost pile.

Make a pile and let the kids play in it. They crunch down to little pieces in no time.

Thanks everyone. Wow! I can't believe I didn't think about renting. I'll see if I can't find a place that has a rental for an affordable price, but I won't get my hopes up since they're probably in high demand right now.

When I said I just can't buy equipment, it means that I can't just get a new mower. Renting is more of a possibility. That was my panic speaking.

Thanks everyone for the good suggestions. The kids idea was cute but, knowing the neighborhood hoodlums, my leaf pile would probably end up on fire somehow.

Or, could you borrow a mower from a friend or neighbor a couple of times?

Another option is a leaf blower/vacuum/shredder. Mine is a Toro which costs around $50. It mulches leaves to a 10:1 ratio. Works well, but if you are getting a huge volume of leaves, a mower would definitely be faster than a vacuum.

Karen

If you have a place you can pile up the leaves, wet them down and cover with a tarp they will turn into leaf mold over winter which can be spread around without risk of blowing away.

In my experience, the leaves from landscaping businesses are pre-shredded. Let's face it. They don't rake up a truckload of leaves - they vaccuum them up, which shreds them. The leaves I get delivered to me don't blow around.

tclynx: Maybe you get leaf mold in one winter in zone 9, but I have never found that in my zone 6 yard. Do any other zone 6-ers? Impatient, and not willing to store long enough, they always end up as mulch or compost ingredients.

Clumsygardener is also in zone 6.

Karen

I suppose it is more about the conditions and type of leaves involved than the zone cause I've collected plenty of nice leaf mold after one winter up at my grandmother's house (In a thin edge of zone 5 I think between some zone 4 and 6.) Maple and basswood leaves decompose quickly there. Oak leaves here in zone 9 are even slow to break down in hot compost.

I'm hoping for your sake that the load of leaves dropped off turn out to be already shredded and you can simply apply them to your garden beds. I wish I could find a landscape company that would deliver leaves to me.
Good luck

Mommyandme are you serious? They're shredded before they get here?

*forehead smack* I hope you're right. I'd rather feel really silly than have to explain to the neighbors why their lawns have leaves with no available trees.

If you guys wonder why I don't just ask them for a mower to borrow, it's because they don't do their lawns. They have their lawns done for them.

If you want your leaves in a vegetable garden or an annual flower bed, dig a trench, put some leaves in and cover them with dirt, then dig an adjacent trench and repeat until all the leaves are covered. This is called double digging, and in addition to amending the soil, it prepares a wonderful bed for spring planting!

very new to this, but . . . what about just adding a bunch of N (eg blood meal) to leaf pile over the winter to speed up decomposition?

If she tried to double dig a truck full of leaves into her beds she'd likely die of old age before finishing, or old timers disease might cause her to forget the original mission...

Karen

I don't have old timers. Just some-timers, which is sporadic but just as effective. Thanks for the suggestion but I'll leave the double digging to stronger folk and let the worms do the work over winter.

This landscaper is a childhood friend of mine. His business started with him pulling a mower on a cart behind his bicycle. It's now a thriving business and he bought his first house in a nice neighborhood just a couple of years ago. How's that for an "American Dream" story? :)

Hopefully, now I get the benefits of preshredded mulch every year. ^_^

Good luck, clumsygardner. I think mommyandme is right- they'll most likely be already shredded. Let us know!

Karen

Well, I called him and he says he just uses a rake and a tarp. ARGH! But whole leaves are all that bad. They take longer to compost and won't gum up badly if I don't pile them too high.

What were you planning to do with the leaves if you did have a shredder?

If you were going to layer them on your garden beds, you could put a tarp over them and then get a load of mulch delivered (free from tree trimmers). As you distribute the leaves to your garden beds, you could cover them with mulch to keep them from blowing around. A lot more work, though.

If you were going to set them aside to make leaf mold or as a compost brown, you could use a tarp, and add N occasionally (liquid gold, aka urine, is the cheapest source). Or you could set up some circles of fencing to hold the leaves.

Right now the wet leaves are in a large pile behind my house. There was much more than I could do with the leaf vacuum. I guess I will have to leave it over winter. (Haha! Get it? Leave?) At any rate, thanks for all your help. I have layered some on my lasagna beds.

Here is a tip to try to get your mower started. Take a hair dryer, turn it on high, and aim it at the tube that comes from the gas tank and goes to the carbuerator and the carbuerator (that whole area) for about a minute or so. (Don't get it too hot, it may cause a problem.) Then try to start it. It almost always works on the first try. My husband does this on the lawnmower and the yard machine, if they have been sitting and not used for a while. He swears it works every time. Hope this works for you.