Mulch is often, and rightly so, described as gardener’s gold. But you’re wondering can I use lawn mower to mulch leaves when I could just use a leaf blower?
Well, believe it or not, there are actually some benefits to using a lawn mower for mulching leaves.
For one, it’s more likely to chop up the leaves into smaller pieces than a leaf blower, which makes them break down faster.
Plus, using your mower for mulching leaves instead of your leaf blower can help save you some time and energy.
If you’re looking for an easy way for mulching leaves this fall without winter blend fertilizer or any other fertilizer, consider using your mower!
Can I Use Lawn Mower to Mulch Leaves
Yes, you can use a lawn mower to mulch leaves. The easiest way is to mulch the leaves into your lawn using a lawn mower set to mulch. Alternatively, you can go over already mowed leaves again with a regular mower to pulverize them. Both work superbly in mulching leaves using a mower.
How to Mulch Leaves With a Lawn Mower
Mulching leaves with a lawn mower is an excellent way to clear unsightly leaves from your lawn, keep them from suffocating your lawn with leaf litter, and provide a nutritious mulch.
Below is a guide for mulching leaves in your yard with a lawn mower.
Step 1: The lawnmower
While any lawn mower can chop up leaves after a few passes, the type and size of lawn mower you use in mulching leaves will impact your effectiveness and the labor needed to get the same amount of work done.
If you have a standard, non-mulching mower, you can easily outfit it with a serrated blade designed explicitly for mulching leaves.
We recommend using any rotary action lawn mower for mulching leaves in your garden. Two types of mulching mowers excel in this task: high-power mulching lawnmowers and side-discharging lawnmowers.
If you want to leave your leaf mulch on your lawn, ensure that you remove the grass catcher from the mower (remember to be careful with the blade).
If you plan to use the leaf mulch elsewhere, leave the grass catcher attached to your mower to save you the effort of leaf raking and gathering the mulch afterward.
Step 2: Start mowing leaves
The side discharge mower is best if you’re planning on mulching leaves back into your yard or shred them into finer pieces that you plan to pick up later.
If the grass is moist and tall, and the leaf cover is heavy and wet, it is the best mower to use. Mow the lawn in stripes so that on your next pass, you can cut the discharged strip from your previous pass.
Another technique is to mow in concentric circles, allowing you to cut and recut the particles. You can also decide to set your lawn mower to mulch.
This method is best for grass with average height and for moist to dry leaves that are not wet. To follow this method, you first need to attach the mulch plug into the lower and close the side discharge.
Go ahead to mow your lawn as you usually would and make another pass perpendicularly to the first to mulch the clippings back to the grass.
Step 3: Distribute the pulverized leaves
If you plan to use the mulch on your lawn immediately, you will need to distribute them over the entire area.
Avoid a thick layer by using a rake to spread the leaves over the whole yard and to ensure that you cover all bare spots.
If you plan to move the mulched leaves to use elsewhere, consider raking leaves to a smaller area to leave you less space to cover when gathering them.
A one-inch layer of leaf mulch is ideal to leave over your lawn, as it will wash down with rain and decay over time, giving you a healthier lawn.
If your mulched leaves are too thick, reattach the grass catcher to your mower and pass it over the lawn again to achieve a thin layer. Or you could rake up the excess leaf litter and use it elsewhere.
Why Mowing Leaves Is Better Than Raking Them
While raking leaves up instead of mowing leaves does have its merits, such as when the fallen leaves have a disease that can survive if left as mulch on the lawn and reinfects other plants, mowing leaves is by far the most efficient and effective method to manage fallen leaves.
Some of the reasons for this are:
- In some communities, especially cities, fallen leaves are raked, swept up, and washed into sewers. The leaf litter moves to streams and other waterways, releasing substances such as nitrogen that lead to algae growth. You can avoid this problem by mowing leaves.
- Mulch mowing leaves to benefit the lawn some advantages not guaranteed by removal with a rake. You help conserve soil moisture, suppress weed growth, and improve soil fertility.
Other Methods to Turn Leaves Into Mulch
If you don’t have a mulching mower or you’re looking for alternative methods of mulching leaves, you don’t need to worry.
Below, we take a comprehensive look at leaf mulching tips you can use.
Another best method you can use for mulching leaves is by raking the leaves up and creating leaf mulch, as explained below.
Step 1: Gather and prepare the leaves
The first step in mulching leaves will be to rake together the leaves on your lawn so that you can prepare to turn them into mulch.
After preparing the mulch for some time, you will better estimate the number of leaves you will need to collect to create a good mulch for your lawn size.
If you are working on a smaller yard, you will only need around one big pile of leaves or more if you are working on a more oversized yard.
As you gather the leaves, try to get rid of large rocks and sticks. While such smaller items will not disrupt the mulched leaves too much, larger ones could disrupt the mulch spreading.
Step 2: Shred the leaves
Shred the leaves before the next step because unshredded leaves tend to pack down and keep moisture and air from reaching the soil.
This packing results in anaerobic action (fermentation), which you should avoid. Another argument for shredding your leaves is the twigs.
If you do not want to leave them whole, picking them out can be quite a nuisance. Twigs are primarily an issue when you collect the leaves from the forest or if your lawn has a big, old treed.
Leaves that you shred are less likely to pack down. Shredded leaves are one of nature’s best mulched leaves. To shred your leaves quickly, you will need a shredder.
You could buy one designed to work as an attachment that you can fix to your powered farm machines when you need to shred, or you could buy one with its self-contained engine.
If you cannot access a shredder, you can shred the leaves manually using a pitchfork or a rake, although this will result in larger pieces, apart from being labor-intensive and not the most efficient.
You can also use the mulching attachment on the riding mower to shred leaves into leaf mulch.
Step 3: Use the leaf mulch
After you shred your leaves, you can use them immediately. For the base of shrubs and trees, apply a 3 to 6-inch layer.
For perennial flower beds, a 2 to 3-inch layer will do, while a thick layer of leaves placed between the rows is best for a vegetable garden.
Mulches are at their highest efficiency and benefit when you put them around newly established landscape plants, which significantly increases their chances of survival.
If you collect an excess of leaves, you can also store them in a mulch bin. Unlike a compost bin, which also serves to hasten the decomposition of the leaves, a mulch bin is merely a holding tank, and you’d prefer the leaves do not decompose.
Once the leaves decompose, they are no longer mulch- they are now composted and can no longer serve one of the primary purposes of mulch, which is to suppress weeds.
On the contrary, weeds will grow even faster and ultimately defeat the purpose.
How Do You Mulch Leaves With a Riding Lawn Mower?
Mulching leaves with a riding mower is almost the same as mulching leaves with other lawnmowers. As with other mowers, you can do it two ways.
First, you can mow the leaves typically and then go back over them again to pulverize them to the needed size.
With this method, remember to remove the bagging leaves attachment and set the mower for side discharge to make going over the cut grass easier.
Second, you can just put the mower to mulch and then go over the leaves and close the side discharge. The choice of a riding mower is also one of utmost importance.
When choosing the mower, get one that has a rear-wheel-drive and is self-propelled. Apart from the mower’s weight, it also has to move the bag of leaves and grass if the bag catcher is attached.
A drive system, a rear-wheel-drive, is better than the front-wheel system since the bag of grass clippings will weigh on the back of the mower and cause it to lose traction.
What Is the Difference Between Compost and Mulch?
Compost and mulch are not similar products. They are fundamentally different and are also used for other purposes.
We take a comprehensive look at these two substances below and the intersectionality of their uses.
What is mulch?
It is a layer of material that you apply to the soil surface. Mulching is done for various reasons, including weed suppression, improving the health and fertility of the soil, retaining and conservation of soil moisture, and enhancing the aesthetic appearance of the area.
These reasons are comparable to using fertilizers like winter blend fertilizer mostly a good choice in fall.
Mulches are usually, but not exclusively, organic and may be permanent or temporary. You can also make different types of mulched leaves from various materials such as:
I. Organic residues
These are among the most popular materials used for mulches. The organic materials include chopped leaves into small pieces, straw, hay, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, bark, newspaper, and animal manure, many of which also act as a direct composting system.
ii. Inorganic and synthetic mulches
These types of mulches, such as plastic, are great at holding moisture and suppressing weed growth. Inorganic mulches are also good when used around plantation plantings and other shrubs and trees that do not need frequent fertilization.
However, they decompose slowly and have the disadvantage of decaying slowly and not adding any nutrients to the soil. As plastic mulches decompose, they are also harmful to the environment.
Inorganic mulches may also lack aesthetic appeal for many people, although you can quickly correct this by adding a thin layer of bark to the plastic.
You can also use stone and gravel as mulching material. These materials work well in areas that need good drainage or plants that thrive in additional heat, such as rain gardens.
Since these materials are hard to remove, you should choose due consideration before using them.
What is compost?
Compost is a mixture of ingredients that you prepare by decomposing organic material, which you use to improve and fertilize the soil.
Compost uses include improving the soil’s structure, suppressing some soil-borne diseases, attracting beneficial insects to the soil, and holding and releasing nutrients in a slow-release form, which allows them to be available through the whole growing season.
You can use any untreated organic matter to make a compost pile. However, compost pile needs a mix of green waste (predominantly rich in nitrogen) at the most basic level and brown waste (mostly rich in carbon).
When mixing, an ideal ratio would be around three parts green waste to one part brown waste, although you will still get good compost even without mixing it in this ratio.
You can add the compost to the garden at any time to get turned into the soil or used as a top dressing for established plants. The amount of compost you add will depend on your starting soil quality.
What are the Differences Between Compost and Mulch?
- Placement– Compost is often dug into the soil while mulch goes on top of the soil, and you do not dig it in. Compost works within the soil, while mulch works on the top of the soil.
- Purpose– The primary purposes of mulch are to conserve soil moisture and suppress weed growth, while the primary purpose of compost is to improve and fertilize the soil.
- Type– While you can use both organic and inorganic materials for mulching, composting requires organic materials.
- Nutrients– While mulch does leach nutrients into the soil, it does so at levels far lower than compost can produce.
Can You Use Compost as Mulch?
Yes, you can. Compost to spare will make an excellent nutrient-rich mulch if you have compost.
Mulching your lawn with compost will give you all the benefits of non-organic mulches with the added advantage of having nutrients leached to the soil underneath.
Rain or irrigation water running through the compost layers will wash down small doses of carbon and nitrogen and improve the soil in the process.
A two to four-inch layer will work best when using compost as mulch. Place the compost over the soil around your plant and extend a foot outward.
As the compost works its way into the soil during the growing season, you can add extra layers around every month, especially during autumn and summer.
Apart from using the compost exclusively as mulch, another way to use it is topping it with another layer of mulch.
After you spread a thin layer of the compost around the plants, you can top it off with another mulch such as shredded leaves.
The extra much topping will help keep the compost biologically active and moist, which will be the most effective for your soil.
So, when should you use compost as mulch? It may help keep the roots insulated with mulch during the winter months and protect the younger plans from extreme ice and snow.
During spring, you can remove the compost from around the plants to allow more sunlight to reach the ground and help thaw it.
Can You Pick Up Leaves With a Riding Lawn Mower?
Yes, you can pick up leaves with a riding lawn mower. Most riding mowers achieve this with a leaf collection system that pushes the leaves into the leaf collection compartment or bag.
You do not even need to be mowing the grass. Try and adjust the mower to the top height position and see how effective it is. If it does not work as well as you wish, you can try lowering it a bit.
You can collect leaves with your riding mower using various collection systems designed to fit your lawn mower model. There are three types of collection systems that you can use, as discussed below.
The flow leaf collection system
This system is the least complicated system for your riding lawn mower. It uses the airflow created by the mower’s mulching blades to move the shredded leaves to the bag through the tube.
On a push mower, you would achieve this by pushing the leaves through the discharge chute to the grass catcher bag.
The belt-driven collection system
In the belt-driven collection system, the blower housing is attached to the discharge side of the mower’s deck. The blower housing protects the impeller fan.
A belt on the mower drives the impeller fan to create airflow. This airflow pushes the leaves through the blower tube to the attached bags.
The pull behind collection system
The pull behind system utilizes an additional engine on a trailer-mounted system to create a vacuum that pulls the leaves into the leaf collection bags through the tubes.
If your mower does not pick up leaves as expected, there are various issues it may be having that you will need to get fixed. These include:
- Clogged tubes
To check for this issue, remove the blower tubes and check for any debris stuck there, such as leaves and sticks.
Spray the inside of the tube with silicone to prevent future leaf debris from getting stuck again. You can use the silicone spray frequently to avoid the number of times debris gets stuck.
- Damaged mower blades
Inspect the mower blades to see if the sails (which are the high side of the blade) are worn. If they are, you cannot move leaves and grass around the underside of the mower deck to create enough airflow to move the leaves through the tube.
Using the wrong blade or installing one wrongly could lead to the same problem. Ensure that the sail is up and pointed toward the deck to create a good vacuum when installing grass blades.
- Bad deck belt
On a belt-driven collection system, a worn belt or one that appears to have a shiny glazed look could be causing the problem. In this case, you need to replace it. This issue is also the case for the blower belt.
- Inadequate engine speed
The speed of your engine is vital to your collection system’s operation. The engine needs to run at maximum speed also to run the bagging leaves.
If the engine sounds problematic when running the bagging leaves, get it looked at and fix or upgrade it.
- Clogged inlet tube
To check for this issue, remove the bagging leaves, and inspect the inlet tube. If it is clogged, clean it up.
- Plugged inlet screen
The inlet screen allows air to exit the hopper to carry leaves up the tubes. If it’s plugged, you lose the air draft that moves the grass clippings, and the bags won’t be loaded with leaves by the system.
Since the screen is usually at the top of the hopper out of sight, most people forget to clean it.
You can easily clean the inlet screen by hand, using a wire brush for tough build-ups. Then spray it with a silicone spray to keep debris from sticking.
Final Thoughts
There are several variables that determine the results you get when mulching leaves with your lawn mower. Chief among these is the mower. Are you using a ride or push mower?
Does it have a mulch setting? Can I use it to pick up leaves to mulch later? You need to answer all these questions to get the most effective results. Still, the question remains,
Can I Use Lawn Mower to Mulch Leaves?
Yes, you can. As explained above, there are several ways you can use mulch leaves with your lawnmower, whether it has the mulch option or not.
Thank you for going through this article, and we hope it has been informative. You are welcome to leave any thoughts, comments, or suggestions in the comment section below.