Get about a billion leaves every fall and I have a blower that converts to a mulch/vac with a bag but it fills up so fast.
I'd like something that can take the odd pinecone or sweet gum seed ball without croaking. If it could chew up ivy, that would be ideal. I don't need it to do limbs or sticks.
Any input appreciated.
I have used a Troybuilt chipper vac, it will get the sweetgum balls.
On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 22:46:04 -0500 "Heather J. Skaggs" used 27 lines of text to write in newsgroup: alt.home.repair
Hi Heather,
Two things.
Best Regards,
-Graham
Remove the 'snails' from my email
My rotary lawn mower does a good job. I usually just mulch the leaves back into the lawn each week or so as they are falling. Not familiar with sweet gum seed balls but it does a fair job grinding fallen pomegranates. For a heavy accumulation of leaves, I used to pick up and bag them with the mower (rear bagger with a large bag). With that shredder you'd still have to rake them up.
We've been using this kind for years. We collect (from around the neighborhood) many, many bags of leaves to shred for use as mulch and in composting.
The way we work it, we have an adaptor on the leaf vacuum that lets you blow the sucked up leaves into the leaf shredder. The shredder sits over a large garbage can lined with a "contractor weight" extra heavy duty plastic bag. The finely shredded leaves are tamped down and stored for future use in the plastic bags.
The leaf shredded will pass through pinecones and sweetgum balls without complaining, though too many of those will shorten the useful life of the (easily and cheaply replaceable) filiments that do the actual shredding. You can also use the leaf shredder to chop up dry straw and shred torn newsprint (the straw makes a better mulch that way and the newsprint can be used as a compost ingredient, worm bedding, or mulch).
The Flowtron won't chew up ivy, though. And it's much, much happier with dry leaves than it is with wet ones.
We are on our second one, which is actually a Craftsman model from Sears.
Last fall I lucked into the ideal leaf disposal problem by buying a Toro electric blower/muncher and a box of Workmaster trash bags from Sam's Club. The bags are fairly large and there are like 500 or so in the box for under $10. Takes 2-3 Toro bags to fill one and it goes really fast. Then they get tossed into the pickup (an SUV works too) and carted off to my composting neighbor. Doesn't even take a whole Saturday morning to do our little 1/4 acre. Beats the dickens out of those silly blowers. HTH
Joe
So does mine. Put in a mulching plug if you have one or leave the bag off with a drop down door. I have mulched piles of maple leaves that were thicker than the mower was high, needed to tilt mower back and usually take 2 passes but when done there is just a powedering of maple leaves left, almost invisible. It won't work on wet leaves tho, or at least not very well.
Currently waiting for the maples to drop so I can do the job.
Harry K
Hi Sterling:
My folks got me this same looking unit. Burned it up first year. IMO not for large volume use. 2-5 yard bags ok 100 not so okay. Do not let leaves pile up under unit to height of motor. This being said found another at yard sale and bought for my mother who has used 7-10 yrs now on only few bags leaves/year. Before riding mower bought 5hp chipper/shredder which would eat about anything. We have hugh oak trees and would haul 3-4 pick truck/topper loads to country per year. Again light duty use(use heavier cord/trimmer string) an ok unit.
Pat R
Sterling wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
The leaf machines are just junk. Ours was falling apart the first day. Now we let the leaves stay on the ground and run them over with the mower the next spring. We could easily have 200+ bags each year, so forget it.
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