Shredding & bagging leaves with a Rear Engine Snapper

riggedveda

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  • / Shredding & bagging leaves with a Rear Engine Snapper
I have about 14,000sqft of lawn. Within that space, I have about 30 trees. Each fall for the past 3 years, I have been blowing leaves into piles, filling leaf bags with them, and leaving them at the curb for the township to pick up. Even with lots of tamping down, I usually end up with about 160 bags.

This spring, we bought about $250 of compost for our raised bed and lawn. That's when I decided that starting this fall, I would compost our leaves instead of leaving them out. I've tried bagging the leaves with my Toro Super Recycler before, and while it worked well in areas where you could still see some green between the leaves, it left too much visible leaf crumbs in areas where the leaves were a few inches high (about half my lawn). It was also a very dusty operation and my mower's air filter would keep clogging up. I also had to keep dumping the bag frequently and restarting the mower, which is no fun in fall temperatures. Another problem is that I'm on a cul-de-sac (typical size, about 150ft across) that I only share with one neighbor across from me. So I'm responsible for clearing leaves from half the cul-de-sac. The mower was useless for this since it kept blowing things around more than it sucked up.

So I'm now in the market for another mower that can (A) shred and bag leaves (B) hold enough volume for less frequent dumping (C) suck leaves better on hard surfaces too (D) leave a cleaner looking lawn with less leaf debris behind.

I've been looking at used snappers since they can fit both my shed and my budget. In particular, there's a 2005 28" hi-vac snapper with 10hp and bagger that I'm really interested in.

I've been looking at videos of these online and I think they leave a clean looking lawn and check off most of the things I'm looking for. The one thing that concerns me is leaf shredding. I need the leaves shred before bagging so they can compost in time for spring, and also so I don't need to empty the bag as often. My Toro does a good job of shredding leaves. But looking at snapper videos, it seems to me that the 6 bushel bag fills up almost as fast as the 2 bushel bag on my Toro, which leads me to believe there's not a lot of shredding going on. I researched other blade options as well, but it appears that the Ninja would work great for shredding, but at the cost of lift, which would leave me back where I am today.

Does anyone have any experience with using a rear engine snapper for my kind of situation? Is there any other compact mower that might work better?
 

Darryl G

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  • / Shredding & bagging leaves with a Rear Engine Snapper
Suggestion for you using your Toro. Start mowing in the center of a lawn area discharging and mowing counter-clockwise. Then put a tarp in the center tacked down with some tent stakes. Now mow again but going clockwise and blowing everything towards the tarp, using a rake if necessary to fill it. Don't run it over! Drap to compost when it's full. Repeat for each lawn area. Give a final bagging mow if needed.
 
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  • / Shredding & bagging leaves with a Rear Engine Snapper
Rigged Veda when you do find what you looking for, then you are going to need some lessons in composting .... If you know how already then you are in great shape....

If you have a leaf shredder then that's great are just use the leaves as is from the mower chopping them up.... Composting is an art.... Some videos on you tube are great for advice on building bins and how much of this and how much of that... Just leaves won't compost that easy.. You can do it though.... Turning the piles and watering the piles adding more to the pile........ It's work for sure.....
 

slomo

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  • / Shredding & bagging leaves with a Rear Engine Snapper
Those homeowner electric blowers have a leaf grinding feature when they are sucked up into the bag. Like a 15 to 1 ratio or something? Check them out. Toro makes the best one.

slomo
 
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