It’s that time of year again and the thought of raking up the leaves from the grass fills me with dread. My garden is bordered by woodland and those pesky oaks and hazels have dumped their leaves all over the lawns and beds.

Are leaf blowers any good? Any to avoid? My plot is long so I think that petrol might be best. Noise is not a problem, I only have one neighbor I need to be concerned about. I don’t need any of this mulching malarkey, all I want to do is shift leaves from the ground into a big pile ready to be composted.

The thing won’t see huge amounts of use at other times of year, just November-time so I’m happy to buy s/h but there seem to be so many options. All advice welcome.

Ambrose

Petrol leaf blowers are worth it. Ryobi do a good cheap hand held or if you want a bit more quality – stihl do a very good hand held for twice the money though. Forget electric blowers.

Do your research on vibration. All of them will claim to have vibration damping handles, or some such gubbins, but all brands are not created equal. Half an hour of 2-stroke vibration through your hand isn’t too pleasant (but still preferable to the equivalent amount of raking up leaves…)

Aren’t leaves on the beds ‘mulch’ and therefore a good thing?

Mulching mower for the grass.

Job done.

Seems to me leaf blowers are in the same group as gas patio heaters
a waste of money

My garden is bordered by woodland and those pesky beautiful oaks and hazels have dumped their leaves all over the lawns and beds begun the part of their natural cycle that feeds my garden full of nutrients and helps it flourish, for free.

Ftfy
😉

Just bought a Stihl BG 85 which I’m pleased with. Much quieter and a fraction of the vibrations of the older model 56 it replaced. For your use this would be a life time purchase.

i think I must be stupid, what good is a leaf ” blower”? Doesn’t it just blow them somewhere else to be picked up? and when they are soaking wet like they are in my garden I cant imagine them actually moving.
or are we talking leaf sucker/hoover?

I’ve got a £30 Lidl leaf blower/sucker. Never used the blower mode, just suck up all the leaves on my drive/garden every now and again. Suits me.

When you do blow your leaves please make sure you stick to the rules and blow them straight off your own garden into the road so that they can clog the drains and blow straight onto other peoples’ gardens. Thanks.

they are soaking wet like they are in my garden I cant imagine them actually moving.

If you ever get the chance to use one of the more powerful back pack blowers then you will see that there is a massive difference in capabilities to the handhelds. Wet leaves are no problem at all – we use ours for removing wet mud from walkways let alone leaves. I could not live without our Stihl back pack on our farm. It is one of the most useful bit of kits.

Thanks for the input everyone.

The garden is on a north facing slope and receives far less sunshine than I’d like. I’ve tried leaving the leaves to act as mulch – the ground stays too cold for too long and detritus builds up year on year in some places.

The leaves collected are composted and then dug in as an improver for the spectacularly wet clay soil that I’m blessed with.

The Stihl BG85 is looking good so far…

Surely the most pointless thing known to man.

I have leaves

And a machine to move them from here to there.

Why?

Come round to my place and have a look. I have rakes galore for you to use.

I bought a ex council rucsac style Stihl leaf blower from a dispersal sale. I can’t remember the model just now. It’s a great piece of kit. It blows even compacted wet leaves easily.

We have a lot of trees and a lot of lawns. We use also use the mower set reasonably high to mow and mulch the leaves, they make great compost.

How did you find out about these dispersal sales of which you speak? They sound like a good source of useful stuff.

Edit- Scrub that Google is my friend. If I want to buy a disused Old People’s Home or Primary School.

I’m with Tiger6791. Leaf blowers have always struck me as the sort of thing Douglas Adams might have joked about, and maybe given the telephone sanitizers to take with them.

I suppose I might think differently if I had a massive garden full of rotting leaves though.

Suburbia wouldnt understand…..not enough trees there you see .

Using a rake is much quicker and I speak from experience. :-/

While the nay-sayers may have a point, in certain circumstances (small gardens where it would be easy to rake, and no space to blow the leaves to, etc.) for a garden above a certain size the leaf blowers win hands down.

Lester – Member
i think I must be stupid, what good is a leaf ” blower”? Doesn’t it just blow them somewhere else to be picked up?

Generally you’d blow them somewhere you can just leave them. And if you do want to collect them for compost/mulch then you can either blow them into a pile, which makes it a million times easier than picking up leaves that are strewn over a big area, or switch to suck and hoover them all up – most decent blower/vacs will chop the leaves as they suck, which helps to compact them in the collector bag and aids composting.

and when they are soaking wet like they are in my garden I cant imagine them actually moving.

Clearly you’re not imagining a powerful enough blower! Mine’s a cheapo Homelite brand but even that will lift compacted leaf/stick/fruit matter from the drive where it’s been repeatedly squashed by vehicle tyres, then dried in the sun, and added to and driven on for a period of weeks. Wet leaves are no bother, it’ll even move yard-long branches (1/2 inch thick) dropped from the redwood trees, which have big heavy bunches of leafy/needly bits at the end.

Where shouts are you? Selling my trusty stihl petrol blower soon

I’m in leafy Carmarthenshire.

no way is a rake quicker

ive got a rear lawn about 6000 sq foot, leaf blower use to blow leaves from edges to a long snake of leaves along the spine of the law, then just scoop them up into the garden bins (do compost some also, but got plenty)

Got a couple of those Stihls at work. Come up very good on the vibe tests, even after several years.
More useful than just leaf blowing. Use ours to get fires going, clear saw dust and chip from the machines and snow off vehicles.

I laugh at the lemmings who sort the contents of their rubbish bins in order to Save The Planet™ and then use petrol powered leaf blowers instead of a rake.

I’ve recently bought a Stihl SH86 C-E from Toolbritannia.
It’s the vac/blower one with the “easy start”. It must be easy as the wife uses it almost as much as me.
Excellent piece of kit, saves loads of time clearing leaves from the drive , lawn etc.
Their price was the best by a long way, so good my brother in law bought one from them after seeing mine.
I’ve also got a discount code for them if you decide to get one.
Email in profile if needed 😀

Cut your grass with a scythe do we enfht ?

Thought not.

Back under the bridge.

I suppose I might think differently if I had a massive garden full of rotting leaves though.

you would for sure. I did. If you have some big trees and an enclosed garden the leaves get massively out of hand in Autumn. A leaf blower becomes a necessity if you don’t want to be knee deep in leaves by mid-November.

A rake would be about as effective as cutting the grass with a pair of nail scissors.

My reply on this subject last week below. Ps def get a used backpack, they are significantly more useable than handheld.

I’ll explain why we use blowers as generally the public find them confusing. Incidentally, tbe leaf blower is my most important tool, the only one that saves me serious hours of work and could not be temporarily repaced by another tool.

1. Leaf blowers are not just for leaves. They clear grass cuttings from paths, twigs, stones/soil are blown back in to shrub beds, hedge cuttings get blown onto lawns so they can be sucked up by mowing.

2. Try brushing up wet leaves. A blower lifts them no bother and puts them somewhere I can then collect them.

3. Gravel paths/driveways. You can’t brush leaves off them and a rake won’t collect the majority of small bits. Left on stone chip areas, leaves will decompose and provide something for weeds to grow in and encoirages moss / algae.

4. Gardens often have ‘sink’ areas that can be used to blow leaves and debris into and not require picked up. These could be out of sight behind hedges etc, places where the debris can be left to rot down and add something back to the ground.

5. Dog poo. If I have to cut a lawn and find dog poo, I’ll either leave the site and still charge for the wasted time, or on the odd occasion use the blower to move the poo out of tbe way. I won’t have dog poo on my machines/clothes/face/in tne van.

6. General speed. Far quicker to walk straight lines on large gardens windrowing leaves for a final rake up than to rake the whole garden.

7. Awkward corners. Blowers can clear leaves from corners and under shrubs/hedges far more thoroughly than rakes.

8. Loads more reasons but I’ve had enough of tne typing for now.

Screw noise pollution. Maybe we should ban vehicles, children, building works, road repairs and anything else that makes noise? My blower is one of those nice commercial ones strong enough to knock down kids and throw small pooches in the air 

I laugh at the lemmings who sort the contents of their rubbish bins in order to Save The Planet™ and then use petrol powered leaf blowers instead of a rake.

They use next to no petrol. Maybe a gallon per year max.
I suppose you don’t drive, fly or use any electricity either. Not sure how you even managed to post a reply.

Leaf blowers are a waste of time unless you have ‘corners’ you can blow the leaves into. When they are nicely piled up you can (on many models) reverse the action so that it sucks them up, shreds and bags them.

If you can’t easily blow the leaves into corners then I still haven’t found anything better than raking them into piles with a big leaf rake, then scooping them up using the rake and a washing up bowl. Or just mow the lawn if it is not too wet, the mower will pick up a lot.

dannyh, see my reply above. I use them every day. If I only had rakes I’d go out of business fkr charging too much to cover the time and also doing an incomplete job as rakes will NEVER clear up everything.

Leaf blowers are a waste of time unless you have ‘corners’ you can blow the leaves into

Do you have a round garden then? Serious question.

Or just mow the lawn if it is not too wet

That does work, but unfortunately I find it too wet for most of the time when needed. Like right now for example.

Great thread! Btw to the anti petrol troll. I just demoed a battery powered blower for commercial use. Quiet, almost no vibes and no fumes! Still really powerful but mega expensive so not really for domestic.

The oaks have pretty much all dropped now, the hazels are still hanging on. The ‘lawn’ is almost totally hidden under a cover of leaves. Hopefully I’ll get some time on Sunday to move some of them from A to B for composting. 100m long by 60m makes for a lot of work.

I’m feeling guilty about the CO2 emissions the blower might produce.

Quality blower for sale in the Classifieds.

Blowers are useless they just move the problem around. The shredder function is the best part, mainly because it reduces the volume by tenfold. If you have a 10 acre pile then it helps them mulch down quicker, for the rest of us you can force a gigantic volume in a wheely bin.

That particular blower is too far away from me unfortunately. And as for filling wheely bins- I need skips!

We bought a bosh als 25 and at the lowest setting sucks up everything you can sweep leaves up from paths etc but it saves lots of time over a rockery or uneaven ground plus our shreads the leaves aswell as it sucks them up so we get more into the recyle bin 🙂

blowing the leaves into a pile is one thing , but …..

for sucking them up.