Dealing with the Wet Leaves in Winter

Nick had a pretty good question here, ‘how do you get rid of those wet and soggy leaves? What do you do with them?’

There are still companies out there running, playing catch-up because the snow came early and the oak leaves came down late. So you got this conundrum of man. I got a mess in my yard. What should I do? You can grind them up with the mower, but I would do that before you send it in for its winter maintenance. If you’ve got bagging as an option, again depending on how much rain we get.

Backpack blowers are God-sent this time of year because you can really pick up wet leaves with those big blowers. That’s one of those pieces of equipment that I know I want to get in and get my maintenance done on because that’s something I’ll use in the spring when we’re trying to clean all the leaves out of the flower beds.

This time of year I’ll go out there and clean off some of my evergreens. I’ve got some use across the front of my house, big evergreen plants. They’re a leaf catcher, and when those leaves get jammed in there, especially the oak leaves because they don’t break down like a maple leaf does, at least not as quickly. The snow will build up on top of that and then peel the bushes apart.

So I’ll go through this time of year with the blower on a nice day and just blow all the leaves that have kind of come down late and got stuck in those bushes. I’ll blow those out that way. If we get a heavy snow load, I’m not peeling those plants apart with that snow laying on top of those leaves on top of the bushes.

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