With all the rain we've had, this year has been a lot more like haying the lawn than mowing it! We had one of those push lawn sweepers when I was a kid (and our lawn was pretty rough!) and it did a pretty good job on leaves as long as they weren't really wet and clumpy. I don't know how it would do on grass clippings, but even if it didn't do a great job, it would be better than raking. When our lawn gets too long, DH, who does the lawn mowing at our house, waits a couple of days for it to dry a bit and mows it again to further break up the clippings and unclump them. However, we live in a rural area and don't need to have a manicured suburban lawn.

Hello again nhbabs, my hillside project has been decided but in the waiting stage until fall. Hopefully next spring I will have some more impressive pictures of the results to post.

Yes, I can't imagine anything working too well on wet clippings. The amount of rain in the past month is staggering. I forgot a 5 gallon pail out on the porch for two weeks and it was nearly full. Looks like more rain this week too.

I mowed the lawn early yesterday and by this afternoon what I cut was mostly dry and resting on top of the grass. I waited longer than I wanted to mow it due to being out of town for two weekends in a row, so I cut 2-3" this time. Last time I cut that much it clumped up and killed some patches in the yard. I'm not after a perfectly manicured lawn, but it's in rough shape to start with so anything I can do to help it along is good. I'm not a fan of doing the same job twice like re-mowing a day or two later, just seems like a waste to me. If one of those lawn sweeper things would pick it up the next day, dry, I wouldn't mind pushing that around for half an hour or so.

I may see if I can find one on the local list for cheap.

Try the push rake called the Shake. I beleive it is what you are looking for. www.theshake.ca

Here is a link that might be useful: The Shake

That reply looks suspiciously like an ad.
Back to the original post, though, I just mow with a bagger on my (electric) mower, and keep a big wheelbarrow in the area where I'm mowing. That way I can empty the clippings into the barrow and wheel it back to the compost when it gets full. No special equipment needed.

we tried an experiment this year out if desperation and methinks it will be our new M.O. going forward. Like others have mentioned our timing was less than optimal with the rain, and the snow was a-coming. Our John Deere riding mower with two rear baggers doesn't really like it when we try to mow wet leaves, or grass for that matter! Well, after trying one run at the perimeter of the yard and the chute getting clogged, DH suggested removing the baggers and chute and blowing the shredded leaves out the back. Despite a few unfortunate backing up movements (covered me in leaf mulch...oops!) this pre-shredding condensed the leaves into little bits, so that all we had to do was mow twice (this time WITH the bagger on) and viola! a much easier task than raking with the tarp and making many trips to the woods...

Oh, yes, I mow twice (once without the bag, then with it attached) to cut the leaves smaller, too. Then I dump the bag into either a wheelbarrow or a giant pop-up garden bag (I have one that's enormous - and if the leaves are dry, they're light weight enough to stuff that bag pretty full and still be able to carry/drag it to where the leaves are going.