The past few days it has been rather windy in my neck of the woods. It blew all the leaves off my property. I do not have to rake or use the bagger on my zero turn at all. Usually there are enough leaves that I have to dump the bags at least 10 times. I guess mother nature took pity on me this year.

Just remember wind direction sometimes changes. They may come back.

LOL, I live in a valley where it is pretty flat, I think those leaves are in the next county by now.

I play the wind when raking leaves so they'll cross the road and into the field. This year a couple winds helped me get 75% cleaned out with little effort

I prefer keep the leaves infact, last time the boys and I removed the leaves at church they went tin bags then the back of my truck and ultimately spread and tilted into the garden. I have mowed over them and chopped them up but have never removed leaves on my property. One of nature's free fertilizers and gifts.

The local town has a leaf collection program and suck them up in a vac truck it goes into a mountain size pile with a sprinkler system. the warer helps them break down. Locals can come ger them.for free and the city used them to mix in with crap fill dirt. I used to get several large trailer loads a year. Its absolutely great for building healthy soil
I moved to the farm and its a 2 hr drive now so have only got a large dump trailer load once since moving to the farm.

I worked a foot of leaves into garden last year and I think it helped with a healthy soil. I had a great garden so didn't hurt.

My Bradford pear trees still have not lost all their leaves

It can pull some nitrogen out of the soils when breaking them down. But the added organic materials far off sets that loss.

If I ever get time I would like to add enough bio char to equal 10% of the composition. Basically natural charcoal. I saw some studies done on raised beds with a control bed, 3%, 5, 10% bio charcoal mix. and each with the bio char was an improvement 10 % was the best. My wood burner ashes and coals go in the garden BUT its a large garden and will take a lot to do waht I want. The wood burner doesn't even make a drop in the bucket. May be something you would want to check into.

I think your leaves ended up in my yard, Jim!

want 'em back?

That's what happened to me. I blew a lot of my leaves into the woods. The wind changed and a lot of them are back in the yard.

If I leave the leaves in my yard they would be a foot or two thick. Then comes winter and they gag the snowblower every 3 feet. Makes it impossible. I agree with tilling them into the garden. I also mulch them into the yard when there only a couple inches deep. But that's rare. Most of the time they're too deep and just snow plow in front of the mower lol

All we are is dust in the wind