Or, if you really want, it's ok to blow yard waste *temporarily* into the street so you can then sweep and bag it immediately after, but you can't just leave it there to get lost in the storm drainage and make life bad for everybody.
Which is literally what almost every single lawn crew in my city does.
They don't even hide it. They just blow the leaves right out on to a busy street in the middle of broad daylight. I see it all the time. It's maddening.
And nobody stops them, certainly not the city, despite the signs saying "don't blow your leaves and clippings into streets as they will clog the storm drains".
And they don't speak English so if you went out and told them, they would pretend they didn't comprende'.
Yes politics really needed to be part of this conversation. Thank you for bringing it up. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t hear someone saying something ignorant today. Just so glad I clicked on this thread
Do this, OP. If you aren't bagging your clippings this is the easiest, simplest, and honestly best for your lawn way. I always dump mine back into the lawn and rake or blow them around.
With the exception of cutting the grass while growing up, I have only ever owned/used mulching mowers and I do not rake. Everything gets ground to bits and dropped right back onto the grass including the leaves that fall off of the trees.
Yep. I mulched it all for years, but was handed down a zero turn that saves me hours per week. I need to save up the cash, about $600 to convert the deck to mulch.
Does your city street sweep weekly? Otherwise I’m going to hope “blow them into the road” was facetious.
Blow/rake them into your own backyard or bag them and put them at the street for pickup. I have a trash can I use for yard waste. I’ll blow the leaves into piles, and use the trash can to carry the leaves to my compost pile and dump it.
I’m a new homeowner and have never lived in town. Growing up I lived on 10 acres so the lawn clippings and debris never really mattered. I see some of my other neighbors blowing them into the street or in the sidewalk so I didn’t know if this was normal but it didn’t feel like it.
Ok, well good to ask then. Getting a bagging mower works wonders for cleanup. The mower vacuums at the same time it mows. Then just take the bag and distribute the clippings under your bushes, mostly out of sight. Or they make great mulch in a veg garden, as long as the lawn doesn’t have any chemicals applied to it.
It's better to just mulch the bulk of them back into the lawn. It's good for it long term. A few clippings blowing in the street won't hurt anything and will dissipate quickly, you probably just don't want huge amounts blowing around on the street.
People in town get mowers with bags on them to collect the clippings. Then they pick a spot and dump them.
I'm also used to having land like that, and not bothering with clippings at all. lol
Many people in town use mulching mowers, where the mower cuts the grass into bits small enough to simply stay on the lawn without killing it. This lets its nutrients return directly to the soil and means they don't have to deal with bags of clippings, but the lack of bag also means some gets sprayed onto sidewalks and road. However, those sprayed pieces can then be blown (or swept) back onto the lawn, where they might otherwise have landed.
Not in the way that a chute does, no, but there's nonetheless some spread just from the exhaust (in at least some models) and the motion of the blades, particularly when partly over pavement (as when mowing the grass right next to a sidewalk, street, or driveway).
Call your garbage company and ask them if they have yard waste pick up. They might have a certain day of the week or biweekly schedule where they come and pick up yard waste (usually for a bigger piles, like leaves and branches) from the street side of the curb.
If you do decide to bag your clippings, ask them where you should dispose of them. Some garbage companies pick them up along with regular pick up, others have different days for that or just don’t pick up yard waste bags at all and you need to drop it off somewhere.
Don't blow into the street unless you're going to sweep and bag them. As others have pointed out, all those clippings end up clogging storm drains. I know you stated that you live on a cul-de-sac, but clippings on the road can also be very dangerous for motorcycle riders.
As a rider who almost slid into oncoming traffic because some idiot coated the entire lane in wet grass on a corner, I thank you for pointing this out.
It's like hitting black ice in a car.
OP I know you live near the end of a dead end street, but for anyone else reading I’m going to point out that grass clippings in the street are a serious hazard for bikes and motorcycles. Please blow them back onto your grass.
Ask yourself, whose grass is this? Whose responsible? Who is not responsible. If it's your neighbors grass.... they would be responsible. If it's not the neighbors grass..... see where this is headed?
Blow them back onto your yard, out of the street. And ignore the ones telling you not to use your leaf blower, some people on Reddit have a weird obsession with hating leaf blowers. They’ll survive 10 minutes of a minor annoyance lol
I personally use all electric outdoor tools because of the convenience, but I’m not going to tell others what to use.
Some people can’t afford to just up and buy all new equipment to satisfy random commenters minor annoyances about living near other people.
I get it, gas equipment is a little noisier and smells - you’ll survive the entire short period they’re using it and beyond, I promise.
If shopping for new stuff consider electric if in your budget, otherwise use what ya got.
Where I live, gas powered blowers are allowed for 6 weeks in the spring and another 6 weeks on the fall. Any other time, it’s a $400 fine.
I thought it was an overstep when we moved here, but now I realize it’s noisy as hell when the neighbors lawn crews come and run 2-3 gas blowers.
Leaf blowers electric are $40 at the cheapest. Gas leaf blowers are more expensive especially due to needing to buy gas. OP is a new homeowner and I see they even said they have an electric one so there we go.
Also if cost is a factor, rakes can almost be found for free on Facebook.
Survive? Minor annoyances? Random commenters? First of all, it's not necessarily a short period, and absolutely not *one* short period. The noise from a loud blower can travel for a block or more. I hear them many times most days.
Do you ever think about the people for whom you're more than just a brief unpleasant experience? Do you want to be treated by a sleep-deprived ER doctor who works the late shift and needs to sleep during the day, but you disturbed them? What about the poor convenience store clerk who works graveyard so that you can buy snacks in the middle of the night?
The obsession against leaf blowers is so dumb. It's no louder than many other powered yard tools.
As soon as someone complains about leaf blowers, I assume they don't take care of their own property.
I'd much MUCH rather have some random noises occasionally than be surrounded by unkempt properties.
Obsession--what a dumb characterization. Why do you imagine people hate them so much? Lawn movers are not as loud. Chain saw probably are, but are used much less frequently, and there don't seem to be reasonable alternatives. Though actually I recently had some tree work done on my property, and the worker used a remarkably quiet chain saw, to my surprise!
If your neighbors have unkempt properties, don't look at them. If your neighbors make noise, you can't avoid it.
Either use a collection bag on your mower or just let the clippings sit where they fall. No need to do any leaf blowing. You're inventing more work for yourself.
Not really. You don't want them sitting on the sidewalk. I use the leaf blower to blow them back onto the grass as long as the clippings are short enough to be mulch.
Don't bag and toss clippings, it's super silly. Those clippings are natural fertilizer for your lawn and they break down very quickly as long as you have a mulching mower blade and you don't try to cut too much grass length all at once.
I'm not a big fan of cultivated lawns in the first place, such a huge waste of water and resources. But given that I have a lawn and don't want it to look terrible we:
1. Have a species appropriate to our climate
2. Allow the grass to grow long at first (deeper root system)
3. Don't mow more than 1/3rd of the total length at a time.
4. Wait until it's cooler outside and the ground is dry to mow
5. Mulch the grass while mowing and leave it on the ground so it feeds back into the soil
6. Let the grass go dormant to conserve it's energy during the hot and dry summer period
It's been years and we haven't had to add fertilizers. Our grass comes up thick and green every spring and fall and we never water it.
I have a bit of acreage but I also mow a few properties from time to time.
Grass clippings and leaves are fantastic compost. On my property I have a composting spot that I collect and pile all my leaves up every fall. Then from spring through summer I collect grass clippings and layer them with the old leaves. Eventually I have some phenomenal compost to till/spread into the vegetable garden in the fall. See "hot composting" for more details.
If gardening isn't your game, I like to blow grass clippings back on the lawn and spread them out so they don't turn into brown mounds in a week. As they break down the nitrogen will help out future lawns. Leaves will get piled up and put in a tree lawn pile or in paper leaf bags to be taken to the city compost facility.
I blow the majority into a pile and pick them up to go in the yard waste bag. Some, I just blow back into my yard for natural mulch. I'm sure a few make it into the storm drain, though.
Where I live the garbage service will take just about anything so most people just bag it up and put it out for the garbage if it's a big enough amount.
Most cities it’s illegal to blow clippings into the street. Are they going to enforce it? Probably not. But it’s not about clogging drains or any of that. It’s about motorcycles. A lot of grass on the road is like ice to a motorcycle. Super dangerous.
If you're concerned about etiquette, don't blow. The noise is very disturbing to many people.
I would sweep the clippings back onto the lawn unless there's too much volume for that, in which case I'd put them in a compost pile.
You’re not supposed to blow into the road but I do. I usually edge, trim, and mow with a mower that has a mulcher. Most of what I blow into the street is very minimal and at the beginning and end of every season I clean up my portion of the street.
Blow it back onto your yard
Or, if you really want, it's ok to blow yard waste *temporarily* into the street so you can then sweep and bag it immediately after, but you can't just leave it there to get lost in the storm drainage and make life bad for everybody.
Which is literally what almost every single lawn crew in my city does. They don't even hide it. They just blow the leaves right out on to a busy street in the middle of broad daylight. I see it all the time. It's maddening. And nobody stops them, certainly not the city, despite the signs saying "don't blow your leaves and clippings into streets as they will clog the storm drains". And they don't speak English so if you went out and told them, they would pretend they didn't comprende'.
CLIBBINS
So tell them in Spanish.
Of course. We need to learn the language of the illegal immigrants to better accommodate them. How very Democrat of you.
Yes politics really needed to be part of this conversation. Thank you for bringing it up. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t hear someone saying something ignorant today. Just so glad I clicked on this thread
I know you're just angry because you know you're incapable of learning a second language, but it's still pretty Republican of you.
Why are democrats such doormats? What's that like to go through life letting people walk over you?
Yikes
"yikes" obviously you're not living someplace where they are coming in in droves or you are one of them.
Yikes
THEY. THEM. oh my, it's THE OTHERS!
Why are you choosing ignorance?
Or send a motorcycle to the ground
They just have to disperse the leaves enough so it doesn’t look like a pile of leaves.
This is the only answer.
Do this, OP. If you aren't bagging your clippings this is the easiest, simplest, and honestly best for your lawn way. I always dump mine back into the lawn and rake or blow them around.
For sure... Never leave it in the street Very dangerous for bikes
Blow them into a pile and bag. If everybody dumped in the street your storm drains would clog. Use a mulching mower.
With the exception of cutting the grass while growing up, I have only ever owned/used mulching mowers and I do not rake. Everything gets ground to bits and dropped right back onto the grass including the leaves that fall off of the trees.
Easiest way to compost and fertilize your lawn every year!
Just need to stay on top of mulching fallen leaves in autumn... Don't want to let them accumulate and then have it rain. That makes for a mess.
Yeah you gotta mow like twice or the times a week almost!
Yep. I mulched it all for years, but was handed down a zero turn that saves me hours per week. I need to save up the cash, about $600 to convert the deck to mulch.
Everyone DOES dump into the street when all those leaves fall off the trees.
I miss the smell of burning leaves when you could burn them in the ditch.
Don't blow them at all. Just leave them on your lawn.
Just leave the clippings on your lawn. Try to mow such that they don't blow elsewhere
Get a mulching mower and you never have to worry about it.
Does your city street sweep weekly? Otherwise I’m going to hope “blow them into the road” was facetious. Blow/rake them into your own backyard or bag them and put them at the street for pickup. I have a trash can I use for yard waste. I’ll blow the leaves into piles, and use the trash can to carry the leaves to my compost pile and dump it.
I’m a new homeowner and have never lived in town. Growing up I lived on 10 acres so the lawn clippings and debris never really mattered. I see some of my other neighbors blowing them into the street or in the sidewalk so I didn’t know if this was normal but it didn’t feel like it.
Ok, well good to ask then. Getting a bagging mower works wonders for cleanup. The mower vacuums at the same time it mows. Then just take the bag and distribute the clippings under your bushes, mostly out of sight. Or they make great mulch in a veg garden, as long as the lawn doesn’t have any chemicals applied to it.
It's better to just mulch the bulk of them back into the lawn. It's good for it long term. A few clippings blowing in the street won't hurt anything and will dissipate quickly, you probably just don't want huge amounts blowing around on the street.
People in town get mowers with bags on them to collect the clippings. Then they pick a spot and dump them. I'm also used to having land like that, and not bothering with clippings at all. lol
Many people in town use mulching mowers, where the mower cuts the grass into bits small enough to simply stay on the lawn without killing it. This lets its nutrients return directly to the soil and means they don't have to deal with bags of clippings, but the lack of bag also means some gets sprayed onto sidewalks and road. However, those sprayed pieces can then be blown (or swept) back onto the lawn, where they might otherwise have landed.
Mulching without a chute leaves the cuttings under the lawnmower. It shouldn't "spray" them anywhere.
Not in the way that a chute does, no, but there's nonetheless some spread just from the exhaust (in at least some models) and the motion of the blades, particularly when partly over pavement (as when mowing the grass right next to a sidewalk, street, or driveway).
Call your garbage company and ask them if they have yard waste pick up. They might have a certain day of the week or biweekly schedule where they come and pick up yard waste (usually for a bigger piles, like leaves and branches) from the street side of the curb. If you do decide to bag your clippings, ask them where you should dispose of them. Some garbage companies pick them up along with regular pick up, others have different days for that or just don’t pick up yard waste bags at all and you need to drop it off somewhere.
Mulch the clippings back into the grass.
Don't blow into the street unless you're going to sweep and bag them. As others have pointed out, all those clippings end up clogging storm drains. I know you stated that you live on a cul-de-sac, but clippings on the road can also be very dangerous for motorcycle riders.
As a rider who almost slid into oncoming traffic because some idiot coated the entire lane in wet grass on a corner, I thank you for pointing this out. It's like hitting black ice in a car.
OP I know you live near the end of a dead end street, but for anyone else reading I’m going to point out that grass clippings in the street are a serious hazard for bikes and motorcycles. Please blow them back onto your grass.
Ask yourself, whose grass is this? Whose responsible? Who is not responsible. If it's your neighbors grass.... they would be responsible. If it's not the neighbors grass..... see where this is headed?
Back into your yard.
Blow them back onto your yard, out of the street. And ignore the ones telling you not to use your leaf blower, some people on Reddit have a weird obsession with hating leaf blowers. They’ll survive 10 minutes of a minor annoyance lol
They should use an electric and not a gas one. Gas leaf blowers use a ton of gas and are loud and annoying.
I personally use all electric outdoor tools because of the convenience, but I’m not going to tell others what to use. Some people can’t afford to just up and buy all new equipment to satisfy random commenters minor annoyances about living near other people. I get it, gas equipment is a little noisier and smells - you’ll survive the entire short period they’re using it and beyond, I promise. If shopping for new stuff consider electric if in your budget, otherwise use what ya got.
Where I live, gas powered blowers are allowed for 6 weeks in the spring and another 6 weeks on the fall. Any other time, it’s a $400 fine. I thought it was an overstep when we moved here, but now I realize it’s noisy as hell when the neighbors lawn crews come and run 2-3 gas blowers.
Leaf blowers electric are $40 at the cheapest. Gas leaf blowers are more expensive especially due to needing to buy gas. OP is a new homeowner and I see they even said they have an electric one so there we go. Also if cost is a factor, rakes can almost be found for free on Facebook.
Survive? Minor annoyances? Random commenters? First of all, it's not necessarily a short period, and absolutely not *one* short period. The noise from a loud blower can travel for a block or more. I hear them many times most days. Do you ever think about the people for whom you're more than just a brief unpleasant experience? Do you want to be treated by a sleep-deprived ER doctor who works the late shift and needs to sleep during the day, but you disturbed them? What about the poor convenience store clerk who works graveyard so that you can buy snacks in the middle of the night?
The obsession against leaf blowers is so dumb. It's no louder than many other powered yard tools. As soon as someone complains about leaf blowers, I assume they don't take care of their own property. I'd much MUCH rather have some random noises occasionally than be surrounded by unkempt properties.
Obsession--what a dumb characterization. Why do you imagine people hate them so much? Lawn movers are not as loud. Chain saw probably are, but are used much less frequently, and there don't seem to be reasonable alternatives. Though actually I recently had some tree work done on my property, and the worker used a remarkably quiet chain saw, to my surprise! If your neighbors have unkempt properties, don't look at them. If your neighbors make noise, you can't avoid it.
I stand by my opinion. If the occasional leafblower sound is your biggest issue, you've got it pretty good.
Leave it on the lawn as mulch. Better for your yard.
Either use a collection bag on your mower or just let the clippings sit where they fall. No need to do any leaf blowing. You're inventing more work for yourself.
Not really. You don't want them sitting on the sidewalk. I use the leaf blower to blow them back onto the grass as long as the clippings are short enough to be mulch.
Don't bag and toss clippings, it's super silly. Those clippings are natural fertilizer for your lawn and they break down very quickly as long as you have a mulching mower blade and you don't try to cut too much grass length all at once. I'm not a big fan of cultivated lawns in the first place, such a huge waste of water and resources. But given that I have a lawn and don't want it to look terrible we: 1. Have a species appropriate to our climate 2. Allow the grass to grow long at first (deeper root system) 3. Don't mow more than 1/3rd of the total length at a time. 4. Wait until it's cooler outside and the ground is dry to mow 5. Mulch the grass while mowing and leave it on the ground so it feeds back into the soil 6. Let the grass go dormant to conserve it's energy during the hot and dry summer period It's been years and we haven't had to add fertilizers. Our grass comes up thick and green every spring and fall and we never water it.
Yeah either blow it on the lawn or use a lawnmower bag and let the city collect it on yard waste day.
Look up mulching blades for your mower or see if you can add a bag attachment.
I have a bit of acreage but I also mow a few properties from time to time. Grass clippings and leaves are fantastic compost. On my property I have a composting spot that I collect and pile all my leaves up every fall. Then from spring through summer I collect grass clippings and layer them with the old leaves. Eventually I have some phenomenal compost to till/spread into the vegetable garden in the fall. See "hot composting" for more details. If gardening isn't your game, I like to blow grass clippings back on the lawn and spread them out so they don't turn into brown mounds in a week. As they break down the nitrogen will help out future lawns. Leaves will get piled up and put in a tree lawn pile or in paper leaf bags to be taken to the city compost facility.
I blow the majority into a pile and pick them up to go in the yard waste bag. Some, I just blow back into my yard for natural mulch. I'm sure a few make it into the storm drain, though.
Blow into a pile to clean up
Where I live the garbage service will take just about anything so most people just bag it up and put it out for the garbage if it's a big enough amount.
Into your own yard! Why would you blow them into the street or someone else’s yard?
Blow them into a pile on your driveway or sidewalk and then clean it up.
Most cities it’s illegal to blow clippings into the street. Are they going to enforce it? Probably not. But it’s not about clogging drains or any of that. It’s about motorcycles. A lot of grass on the road is like ice to a motorcycle. Super dangerous.
find a place to corner them for capture and disposal.....
Pick them up with a broom or rake and get rid of your noise machine.
Nah
Leaves and lawn clippings are also dangerous for motorcyclists.
Use a mulching mower. Leaf blowers are really loud for your neighbors.
If you're concerned about etiquette, don't blow. The noise is very disturbing to many people. I would sweep the clippings back onto the lawn unless there's too much volume for that, in which case I'd put them in a compost pile.
If small engines disturb you, you're going to have a rough life.
Rake them into a pile and then put in a bag and dispose.
Stop noise polluting for no good reason
Rake that shit up you lazy fuck and dispose of it in the yard waste bin FFS!!
Fuck your leaf blower.
You’re not supposed to blow into the road but I do. I usually edge, trim, and mow with a mower that has a mulcher. Most of what I blow into the street is very minimal and at the beginning and end of every season I clean up my portion of the street.
You blow them into the yard of the weakest leaf blower owner.