[Railroader]

I recently bought a thatch rake and after a couple hours of mind-numbing thatch raking and bagging grass for the community compost pile I was wondering what others on here do with their yard waste. When I mow I use a mulching blade, and in the Fall I simply mulch the leaves into the lawn instead of raking.

What do you do with your yard waste and grass clippings?

And in case you've never seen a thatch rake, here's a picture of the vicious looking little bugger:

[Rumor]

I have a gardner.

[Sourbook]

I live in a 27th floor apartment. Haven't touched a garden tool since I was a kid. I do however look forward to mulching at some point in the future.

[ambush]

Duuuuude! you really need a job

[stevesnj]

I use a mulching mower, dont need to fertilize anymore and there no chemical runoff if I would use fertilizer.

[Mastrap]

Bag and leave on the kerb. It gets picked up and added to the municipal compost heap.

[deej5871]

Edit: I am a retard. Don't mind me.

[ghporter]

I mulch when I can. Some garden waste (rose clippings, for example) does NOT compost well, so that goes to the curb and the City of San Antonio does something with it. (We DO have curbside recycling, so that helps a lot, but trash collection around here is less advanced than it should be for the 21st century.)

I'm working on getting all my trees ringed in and independently mulched. Once that's done, my clippings (except the roses) will get raked in with the cypress mulch.

Oh, when I dig up weeds, THEY go to the curb. I don't even leave dead leaf parts on the lawn. I'll keep doing this until I get control of my yard and all my neighbors get rid of all of their weeds. It's almost impossible to reduce weeds by just killing them or even digging them up and composting-dandelions can germinate and grow IN COMPOST PILES. They'd LOVE to be mixed in with mulch!

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Rumor

I have a gardner.

I knew I'd forget at least one option. I always forget at least one option in every poll I do.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by stevesnj

I use a mulching mower, dont need to fertilize anymore and there no chemical runoff if I would use fertilizer.

I mulch, but I still put a broadleaf killer and a light fertilizer down each Spring/Early Summer. It keeps the weeds in check. And my dog tears up the yard pretty quickly if I don't get some quick growth going each season.

I also have to reseed the back yard each year because we have two HUGE Black Walnut trees that nearly kill it each fall. If I raked the leaves, we probably wouldn't have so much grass die off, but raking and bagging to the curb for the compost guys seems like the easy way out. I want grass that's BW Toxin resistant! The last nursery I called to ask what grass seed to buy that was resistant to Black Walnut toxins told me that she didn't sell chainsaws. I chuckled.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Oh, when I dig up weeds, THEY go to the curb. I don't even leave dead leaf parts on the lawn. I'll keep doing this until I get control of my yard and all my neighbors get rid of all of their weeds. It's almost impossible to reduce weeds by just killing them or even digging them up and composting-dandelions can germinate and grow IN COMPOST PILES. They'd LOVE to be mixed in with mulch!

I completely understand what you are talking about.

One HUGE piece of advice I got from a landscaper was to raise my mowing deck. And that dandelions need to be taken out completely from the tip of the root. I bought a funny looking tool that my daughter calls "daddy's dandyloin popper" that does just that. Some teeth are pushed down with a lever I press with my foot and when I pull the tool out it has the entire dandelion all the way from the top to the whole root system. And I walk around with a bucket I "pop" the weeks into. I then soak the weeds in salt water for a couple days and then dump in a pile behind the garden shed.

My neighbors are clueless about lawn care. The neighbor to my East mows his lawn twice as much as me and it's nearly completely weeds. He has his mowing deck lowered as low as it can go and during the dry times he almost completely kills whatever grass has been hanging on. He's constantly asking me how he can improve his lawn, but he never uses the advice I give him. I am tempted to go over in the middle of the night and raise his mowing deck.

[KeriVit]

I just leave it on the lawn.

With an acre and a half- I found it too much to keep up with.

So I mow and leave it. Sometimes pick it up. If it was a smaller lawn....

[JoshuaZ]

I wish I had some sort of lawn. The japanese arn`t big into grass. My neigbor and I just end up grilling in our apartment parking lot. The neighors think we are very strange.

[jebjeb]

Missed an option - I have a back yard but it completely covered with a hardwood deck! So instead of mowing it I just have to oil it a few times a year.

[brassplayersrock²]

a few times?? what cheap butt thin sealent are you using? (not calling you cheap, just surprised you have to do it so often)
edit: to stay on topic. when im home we have gardeners, but i have a small patch of grass outside my bedroom doors and i trim the grass there with one of those hand mowers, and pick up the leaves by hand, than i put the bags into the city green barrels. very fun.

[Judge_Fire]

We squeeze the stuff into a compost which we forget to maintain. Magically, stuff just keeps fitting in.

I'm worried one of these days it'll come knock on our door.

J

[jebjeb]

Originally Posted by brassplayersrock

a few times?? what cheap butt thin sealent are you using? (not calling you cheap, just surprised you have to do it so often)

No offense taken.

I'm actually using a good decking oil but obviously one has to get the timber clean before it gets oiled. This means I spend about an hour or so with a pressure cleaner cleaning all the boards. Then I have to wait for the weather to be decent for a while so it drys out well (the pressure cleaning drives a lot of the old oil out of the timber) and then it takes me around half an hour to get a coat of oil on it. Normally that soaks in over a few hours on a nice day and then I hit it with oil again. I do this at the end of winter and again at the end of the summer.

I live in the city so it gets pretty dirty especially as there has been some demolition and now construction work going on in the block behind mine.

I don't need to really do it this much but it keeps the deck looking great plus my dad is a carpenter and he told me to do it!

[RAILhead]

Mulch mower, or underpaid Mexicans take care of it for me.