How to Harvest Cut Leaves Without a Blower
This week my husband is on fire. First, he suppressed our dog’s lingering vomit odor with this coffee grounds trick. Then, after living in this house for eight fall seasons, he finally figured out how to take the leaves that cover the entire surface of our backyard outside – using a giant blanket as a means of transportation.
The idea came to him when he noticed a neighbor dragging a tarp full of leaves into the street from his backyard. In our city, we have to rake and stack all our dead leaves along the roadside, and several times during the season, the city sends out a large truck to vacuum them all. Unfortunately we are a family without a tarp, but we have some large moving blankets when we moved to the east coast from Phoenix (cities where people can smugly say that the only thing they shovel or shovel is sunlight).
This week he pulled out one of those moving blankets, scooped up some leaves from one side of the yard, and spread the blanket out. Then he and our son raked the leaves onto the blanket; when it was full, he collected it, folding each of the four corners together like a sack, carried it out into the street and threw it in a heap. You no longer need to blow dry leaves around the entire creation or try to rake heavy, wet leaves from a great distance.
If you don’t have a tarp or a moving blanket, use an old blanket, blanket, or sheet. Anything light enough will do, with a large surface area on which to fold the leaves. If it’s too big to bag, just drag and drop it like our neighbor with its tarp.
If you live in a place where you need to bag the leaves rather than pile them up, this trick may still work for you: Gather a blanket full of leaves around all four corners, prepare a bag, and then release one of the corners. by creating a narrow, controlled path for the leaves to drop into the bag without the need to bend, scoop and unload as you did before.