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First autumn in the new house. Going to need a leaf blower to deal with the horse chestnut tree in the garden (already done several conker clearups). What’s good in the world of leaf blowers?
I already have a couple of the Ryobi tools sharing a battery, so maybe their offering, although some reviews suggest it won’t be strong enough to cover the largish lawn as opposed to a patio.
Happy with petrol or battery, but not sure petrol is needed for the size of our garden (approx 90x 30 ft)
Noisy git get a
£10.58 from toolstation
That’s the current tool of choice.
But if the job can be done quickly and easily with a new toy then why not invest? I’m going to be raking leaves 6 months of the year doing it manually.
just run a lawnmower over the top. High cut. It'll cut it up, and put it in a bag for you.
Everyone's a winner
edited to add - obviously make sure the lawnmower is running.
lawnmower works really well. (I have both petrol blower/sucker and battery blower. petrol - very powerful, makes light work of blowing. wet leaves being sucked just tend to continually block the chewing portion. battery - ok on patio).
I have 5 mature large trees (twice the height of the house). Mower is just the easiest - just raise it up so that you are not trying to cut the grass too.
Leaf blowers are ok, but...
The vac setting doesn't get used on mine because stones can shred the impeller blades
Any corners (including the base of a long straight wall) will leave you looking like Worzel Gummidge
Chasing leaves is harder than it looks and you've still got to pick them up, although I guess that you could risk the vac setting in the middle of a clean lawn
IME A combination of all the above techniques is required.
Blow leaves against a wall or fence then rake to collect and lift them in to a bin.
Vac the remaining ones up, best solution i've found is to remove the shredding blades from the vac to stop it clogging all the time. Also allows you to suck up crisp packets, drink cans and other stuff that would normally bugger the mechanism.
Suck up the whole leaves and just keep emptying the bag.
Lawnmower for the remaining loose ones on the grass.
Once all the leaves are collected, feed them into the shredder and bag them for disposal.
Leaves that have gone through the lawn mower make great compost.
I tried a petrol one. It was a right pain tbh.
the battery one just wasnt powerful enough to shift anything mildly moist. Ended up with a corded one which isnt ideal but it allows me to blow the most of them into a pile. the rest just get distributed about.
I use a Stihl SH86. You can either vacuum or blow with it.
The best technique ive found is to blow them into a line in the middle of the garden then hoover them up using the mower. They then get bagged and turned into leaf mould
If I didn’t want the leaf mould, I’d just use the mower or a rake (I use the bulldog one linked earlier)
I manage to fill three or so 'ton' bags each autumn. A second hand petrol Stihl to blow them all into a corner, then I use a fork and big bear-claw hands to lift the leaves into the bag, hooked over the saw horse. Then onto the compost heap/ off to the dump. Straglers are raked or mown up.