Leaf Removal

Work smarter, not harder

By Martin Jansen, owner of Jansen-PCINFO

Every once in a while, I depart from my technical world to write about seasonal events.  Today I write about leaf removal the easy way.

My residential yard has two massive Maple trees, one in the front and one in the back.  Also in the back is an Ash tree.  Front road side is a Ginko, planted by the city about 10 years ago.  In other words I have lots of leaves to pick up in Fall.

Our Maples are notorious for taking forever to drop leaves, often waiting until mid November or longer to drop.

The Ash drops first and whenever possible I use my aging self-propelled Honda lawn mower to suck up leaves.  The Honda is no longer a thing of beauty, but it gets the job done and prevents me from picking up a rake until later in the season.

Appleton has several dates for leaf pickup and we are to use the curb to dump our leaves, sticks and other yard waste.  Because our Maples dump late, we are often in the last or extended pickup time – weather permitting.  By that I mean snow (shiver).

I used to tote the bag from the back yard to the front piggy back style, but no longer.  It is much easier to dump the leaves from the back using a wheelbarrow and large leaf bag.  

With the Ash done and all our plants are cut down and picked up, it’s time to wait for Maples.

I still will use the lawn mower to pick up the early leaf fall, but when they really drop, it’s time for blowing.

I blow the leaves into a manageable area which requires a lot of back and forth movement.  Then I finally use a good poly rake to lightly clear leaves from the river rock beds and further rake the leaves into piles.

Once I have leaves corralled, I can then use my wheelbarrow/leaf bag combo and pick up the leaves with one final tool:

These leaf scoops are the greatest.  They fit nicely over gloved hands and make it easy to pick up lots of leaves at one time – even when the leaves are wet.

That’s it.  Clearing leaves has never been easier using these tools.