Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

    Will a riding mower with a big rear bagger work as a leaf collector?

    My riding mower came with a rear grass bag.  It's actually a big plastic tub with a big line that connects to the outlet of the mower deck.  If that's connected will it pickup leaves?  If it does how good are they at doing that?   Is the collection worth it?  I would imagine it would fill up pretty fast if it does not compress the leaves or chop them so they can fit a bunch in. 

I would guess that the mower would do an exceptional job at picking up leaves.  Switching the blades to "gator" style blades might help to shred the leaves even more.

The mover may be limited in the thickness of leaves that it can handle and as you mentioned, the bag will fill quite quickly.  For a while I had one of those walk behind leave vacs and the giant bag would fill up after going 10-15 feet. I found the leaf vac a nuisance and quickly tired of emptying the collection bag.

If the leaves are not too think and the lawn not too large, simply running the leaves over multiple times before bagging them might solve part of the problem.

I purchased a cyclone rake (wonderful product) from a large property owner that decided it was far easier for him to mulch the leaves in place. By the time the first spring mowing came around he found that there were few leaves left to worry about.  I prefer to grind up and bag my leaves only because I use the ground leaves as mulch on flower beds and around my garlic. Chopped up leaves don't mat down the way whole leaves do and they make an outstanding mulch in my opinion.

I used a mulching mower here on leaves and does an ok job but there are so many leaves the mat of mulch is too thick.   There are about 10 big maples here.

Never heard of the gator blades so poked around.  It seems that to work well the chute has to be closed.  May be it's not possible to get a good leaf chop when shooting into a bagger with a mulcher blade or gator blade. 

I though the catch section of the collector was missing but it came with two bags which attach to the back of the mower.   The bags are not all that big though.  I'll hook them up and try it out next door as there are some spots with leaves over there. 

I had a triple bagger on one of my old tractors that I used to mulch and collect leaves during the fall. It was a PITA as the bags would fill quickly and needed to be emptied frequently. I live in an oak forest and get inundated with leaves during the fall. I also used to mulch the leaves and then use my lawn sweeper to collect them, but again this was a PITA. as the bushel hopper would fill quickly. I had thought about getting a Cyclone Rake or the DR version of the same but could not justify the cost (although I'd love to have one!).

My old McCulloch Backpack Blower died 2 years ago so I went and purchased a Stihl BR550 Backpack Blower which works great. I can blow the leaves from anywhere on my property into the woods - something the McCulloch was never capable of doing. I love using my tractor as often as possible but my Stihl works great and gets the job done pretty quickly.

Depends on how big the catcher is and how deep the leaves are. For 20+ years I had a Snapper Hi-Vac 28" 8HP riding mower and it was excellent as long as there weren't too many leaves. My lawn at that time was about 10,000 sq ft and the back was heavily treed plus it also had woods on two sides. I could ignore the leaves in the front yard (only 4 trees) and just mow normally once a week. In the back where the leaves got deep I had to mow twice a week through most of the fall, or get out the blower. That said, you have a different yard and a different mower, so it really comes down to "try it and see". It was easier and faster for me to blow deep leaves than to try and mow them (slowly or it would clog up) and emptying the bag so often. If the lawn doesn't need mowing, blowing is faster; but both are better than raking.

Sometimes those little plastic carts behind the rider are nice... Just keep dumping the leaves into that ,  make bigger loads to the multch pile.

The twin blades are better at cutting up the leaves (more cutting surface spinning) ,  but aren't as nice on bagging ( one blade ejects cuttings to the other blade to bag the leaves)

Friiy--my 2 cents