mulch to do
Saturday I started working on leaf clean-up at 9:30 am. I finished at 2:30 pm with zero breaks. This included cleaning the gutters and sweeping piles of leaves off the roof.
Last year we decided to use the leaves from the ginkgo tree as a mulch-substitute for part of the landscaping in the back. It was not a perfect solution, but it did help keep the weeds down early on in the season. For the rest of the leaves, I spent time each weekend mulching them into the yard. However, even with keeping on top of them we have so many leaves that I was left with spots on the grass that had too much leaf matter and, as a result, dead spots in the spring.
This years weather, being as strange as it has been, prevent us from doing pretty much anything with the leaves. There still are trees in the area with most of their leaves on them (if you can believe that) and those that did fall remained wet thanks to our frequent rains at the end of October and into November.
So, instead of mulching the leaves and leaving the remains on the grass I decided to mulch and then sweep them up, in order to cover the landscaped area in the back. And, for the most part, the idea worked. (At least so far.) Almost all the leaves from the yard fit onto the landscaped area. Now, there are a couple rather thick areas, I'll admit, but I think with some turning-over in the spring I think we'll be set.
Of course, with mulching all the leaves, we didn't have anything to burn. So, even though this took 5 hours on Saturday, it was better than 8 to 10 hours of standing around trying to get semi-damp leaves to burn...
With luck, this process each fall will keep us from having to buy wood mulch (another 18 cubic yard load? no thank you) for a long time.