Try spreading the leaves out along your driveway and running over them with the lawn mower, this way there's no grass seed or ivy.

You can put a bagger on the mower. No loss of leaves, must empty often. Efficient in one time handling, mower to bag, done.

You can pile up the leaves and mow in a circle, blowing them back into the pile. Works pretty well. You can raise the height to avoid clogging. You still lose some, pieces are too small to pick up. Making a row in front of the bed, mowing then will shoot the shreds into the garden!

Put them in a garbage can and weed whack them. Works, but you need eye and ear protection. Dusty. Pieces are smaller than whole leaf, but not as small as if you had a leaf shredder.

I have found two leaf shredders at local auctions. Both went cheap, $5. and $15 for a bigger model. Both are REALLY nice at making large piles of leave into shreds. Amazing to me how such big leaf piles ONLY give you a bag or two of shreds. Mine use string like a weed whacker, easy to replace. Electric, easy to use, sit on a garbage can or over a bag to fill, but don't like sticks, pretty dusty in use. Can clog if you feed leaves too fast. Have to replace strings that get broken or worn if you don't get the sticks out. My Oaks always have twigs falling. Use eye and ear protection.

You may be able to rent a chopper at the local rental place. Save all your leaves, steal the bagged leaves from neighbors. Do everything in one session. Again wear ear and eye protection for dirt and pieces flying around.

My leaf blower/mulcher is electric and shreds the leaves with a fan type cutting blade as the leaves are being vacumed into the bag. Loved my old one which had an attachment that covered a 33 gal trash can lined with a plastic trash bag so the shredded leaves would go right into the trash bag. I keep the shredded leaves in bags to keep them dry until the ground is frozen and the gardens can be mulched.

The bagged leaves that I pick up on the curb that are not shredded get dumped on the driveway and picked up/shredded with my leaf blower.

For years I did the run the lawn mower over the pile of leaves on my patio. It is effective but lots more work. Our new mower does not shoot the leaves to the side, just mulches them underneath.

The absolute best is when my neighbors bring me their bagged shredded leaves. I get to use the leaves for compost/mulch and they get rid of their many bags of leaves. Just put 14 large bags of shredded leaves on a couple of new beds this morning and returned the empty bags for the next batch of leaves.

I like the driveway ideaÂexcept for the fact that all the leaves are in the back yard! How many times do you have to mow over them to get them sufficiently shredded? IÂd have a hard time doing the persuading on that one. (I have carpal tunnel syndrome and am not allowed to push a lawn mower or any tool you push that vibrates, so IÂm not the one that mows). I suggested the "string trimmer in the garbage can" idea, which I had heard about last fall, but the engineer did not like that idea either.

I REALLY like the idea of the one that sits over the garbage can. Would make it so easy to haul it wherever it was needed. I donÂt think IÂve seen any of these. Are they just called "leaf shredders"? That sounds like something I could do on my own without having to ask (a big plus). What kind of stores carry them?

I think I saw one in the Gardener's Supply catalog. You could online and check them out.

I looked online first locally and saw nothing, then went to Amazon, I saw only one brand, "Flowtron" What brand is it that you who own one have? There were lots of negative reviews on this one. I google searched then and the one that turned up on GardenerÂs Supply looks identical to one of the Flowtron models. All are basically the same model design and motor, with just different legs/stands.

I have a Flowtron and I really like it. The best pro is that it shreds the leaves very finely. The strings are very easy to replace.

The cons are that it is an absolute BEAR to assemble the funnel part (there are a few threads around here on that!), that it doesn't deal well with sticks, of which I have millions, and it is dusty, which is only a minor inconvenience.

Also, I think you need to run it in spurts. I rake up a bag of leaves, shred them, turn off the machine, and rake some more. I remember reading that someone burned their motor out in one afternoon, but I think they may have left it running continuously.

The worst thing, IMO, is the sticks. I place my Flowtron over a large trash can, and every so often a stick comes flying out from between the Flowtron and the can and whips me in the thigh. Hurts like a sonofagun. So when I first start it up in the fall I'm always a bit hesitant, and stand as far away from it as possible, lol.

I have seen these on craigslist a few times. I just saw one last week for $35 - and the best part about buying used is that it's assembled and you won't have to deal with that #$%! funnel, lol!

I'm surprised you saw negative reviews. I'll have to go to Amazon and take a look, out of curiousity. If it weren't for the darn sticks, I would give this machine a definite total thumbs up.

:)
Dee

I have only one tree which sheds sticks,and that's a corkscrew willow. So that would probaly be OK if we just stayed away from that part of the yard when raking. The ash trees drop their leaves way before the willow anyway.

The complaints were about the motor being only 5 amps, even though the more expensive model was said to be 8 amps, plus the assempbly issues, plus the constant line replacement issue.

Four years ago for my B-Day, DH and DD bought me a Black and Decker Leaf Hog. I am still using it and it seems that it shreds better every year - not kidding! It is electric and basically sucks the leaves in, chops them up with a hard plastic blade and then they go in a bag attached to the unit. Once you get used to it, well, I like it. Small branches will also be gobbled up into finer pieces, but it's not made for thick branches. It's a shredder and not a chipper.

Bought for less than $100.00 it is one of the best garden tools we have. If I had to pay for all the mulch provided to the gardens by this machine, I wouldn't have a house...

I bought a Weed Eater brand shredder/vac last year thinking I could "vaccum" the stone courtyard of all the privet hedge leaves. Well, it didn't like anything BUT leaves. No sticks, even tiny ones, definitely no pebbles; so I forgot about that. Plus it also has two funnels, one for vacuuming and one for shredding. Like diggerdee's, it was PITA to change the funnels. Once on the unit, it took Arnold Swartzenneger to get them off. I finally had to take mine to the neighbor guy and have him remove the vacuum one and put on the funnel for shredding. It was easier just to leave that one on. It works, but clogs easily, is very noisy and hard on the shoulder (shoulder strap). Bag holds a fair amount of shredded leaves, but make sure you remember to zip up the zippers again after you empty it! Ugh.

I'm going to try and use the lawn mower with the grass catcher attached this year.

I also have the B & D Leaf Hog. When I got my first one the optional attachment to cover a large garbage can was free. Loved being able to place a big plastic trash bag in the can and shredded until the bag was full. Sure holds alot more than the small bag. Unfortunately my Leaf Hog motor died and when I replaced it with another Leaf Hog the updated one did not have the optional attachment and of course the old one would not work on the new Hog. Also the new one is heavier and bulkier :-(. Wish the old one still worked.

We used to have a small leaf shredder, but it didn't work that well. We definitely couldn't put any wet leaves through it, which never failed, we wouldn't get to the leaves until it had rained. Now we just use the lawn mower. It has worked out much better for us, less hassle, one less piece of equipment to take care of too.

Unless your lawn has turned into a meadow with grass two feet high and seeded out, there's no grass seed in your lawn. And if the leaves are piled and you run your lawnmower back and forth in the pile, with a little reraking as needed, the mower technique is easy and effective.

I shred mine using the lawn mower, only a couple or three bags in the fall to spread on the front gardens because they look more tidy than whole leaves. For this purpose, I put the bag on the mower to catch the shredded leaves, and then dump them into garbage bags to overwinter. Normally I leave the bag off and let the grass clipping return to the lawn.

Sometimes I score at the town composting site and find bags of leaves that are already shredded and bagged for me!

I have not noticed any grass seeds, since it is pretty short. That was my initial worry, but now I'm more concerned about snippets of the creeping charlie taking root, since that weed roots so easily off the stem. But maybe if I compost it all winter instead of spreading it right away, that would take care of it. Is the compost more likely to "cook" if bagged in plastic?

"...Unless your lawn has turned into a meadow with grass two feet high and seeded out, there's no grass seed in your lawn..."

Well, to be honest, sometimes my grass has gotten pretty darn close to 2 feet! I worry about grass clippings in my shredded leaves also, because I have a very weedy lawn. I don't even think the majority of it is actual grass, lol. I have had lasagna beds that have grown grass when I use clippings - and of course, since the soil in those beds is so good, the grass is beautiful and thick - and awfully darn hard to pull out of the bed! So, no more grass clippings in the lasagna beds for me.

We tried the lawn mower method last year and it didn't work well for us. Our leaves are too deep, I think. They don't shred very well. Or maybe I'm just spoiled by the fineness of the shredding of my Flowtron.

:)
Dee

I wouldn't bother shredding ash leaves. If they're like mine, they're already kind of dehydrated and very small when they fall, just about like our oak leaves after they've gone through the shredder. Just rake them up onto a tarp and drag them where you want them. Wish I had ash trees everywhere! Except there's some kind of beetle that's killing them, isn't there?

Yes, there is a beetle that obliterates ash trees and is unstoppable. It's already reached NYS. It's killed millions of trees already. I personally have never found a way to shred leaves that didn't drive me insane. Using a bag on a lawnmower is virtually useless unless you have a riding mower which holds more. I've not found a leaf blower/vacuum that did a satisfactory job or wasn't cumbersome. It's a lot of work. I create my own leaf mold by bagging up leaves, poking holes in the bags and letting them sit all winter to rot. It's the lazy man's way of composting leaves. And it's efficient.

Here is a link that might be useful: Emerald Ash Borer

Here's another vote of confidence for the Flowtron. I debated before buying one due to the negative reviews online-but now having used it for two seasons I think the problem is mostly with people overloading it. It's finicky, but if you treat it well it does a good job. Use dry leaves, don't put in too many at once, let it rest between loads, watch out for sticks. No big deal.

My cousin, AKA The Lazy Gardener, rakes all his leaves to the street outside his house, then drives his car over them several times, then rakes them and bags them and either piles them up for compost next spring or applies them as mulch.

I didn't use the lawnmower after all. Got the leaf vac/shredder out and this time it only clogged three times, nothing serious. Did three big garbage bags full of leaves, and the leaves were dry for the most part; but still my back was starting to ache. It was spitting snow by the time I got to the third bag! This week we're suppose to have temps in the high 60's. Go figure.

I'm one of those negatives for the Flowtron. I think we worked it too hard with not enough stops in between. It was super-dusty, loud and then there's the stick issue. It could take hours just to shred leaves. My husband hated that thing. Rejoiced the day it died (which was in its 2nd season of use -- we didn't get our money's worth).

Next, we tried the mower -- which works well if you've got a bag and a spare. It's best as a 2-person job: One person to mow the leaves, another to rake the rest of the pile into the mower's path so some leaves aren't just pushed out by the air. We go over them once.

On the way is a B&D Leaf Hog recommended by a gardening columnist, it's now practically impossible to find around here after the column. Really excited now to hear about it from some of you!

Here is a link that might be useful: More on the Leaf Hog

We bought the B & D Leaf Hog last fall. I found it useful for sucking the leaves out of the beds where they get jammed around the cut stems, but it's still plenty of work. The bag fills up quite quickly and I felt like I was constantly putting it on and taking it off. Hubby and I still mostly rake onto a tarp and drag the leaves way out back, then he gets out the chipper/shredder and puts most of them through it once we've raked for the 3rd time. Did I mention we have many oak trees? They take their time dropping their leaves and many hang on through the winter.

I like the idea of rolling over them with the car! Though IÂd rather make a pile in the driveway, it would make it easier to zig zag back and forth over them. I have a maple in the front, maybe IÂll try that there.

I just came in from the yard what a great day 60 degrees and sunny. I was using the push mower w/ a bag to get leaves. I kept a wheel barrow near by and emptied the bag into that and then off to the compost pile. It does need to be emptied often as it gets a little stopped up at the bottom. I find it shreds the leaves fine.
Annette

"...It could take hours just to shred leaves..." Wow, lol, I wish I could shred my leaves in hours! It takes me DAYS to rake and shred, usually over the course of several weeks. I've got all oaks too, and they sure do take their time. Usually I have almost as much raking to do in spring as most people do in the fall.

Actually, this year, I've got a call into a lawn service to have them dump a load or two of shredded leaves in my yard. My husband almost flipped when he heard this (our leaves get knee-deep, literally), but I told him as long as he won't get off his butt to help me, I'll have the shredded leaves delivered, supplement that with my Flowtron, and then rent a giant blower and blow the rest (our unshredded leaves) into the woods. One person with a rake on an acre just don't cut it anymore, lol.

:)
Dee