Wrangling with the wacker

Ever since Mom moved down here 6 years ago, she has tried to give me her 'leaf thing'.  I refused, having my own methods of shredding leaves.  But this year I decided to get it out of her garage, bring it over and give it a try.

It's a Craftsman Leaf-Wacker and I have no idea how long ago she bought it.  So I positioned it over a 32-gallon Roughneck to try it out.

The contender:  My stash of leaves.  


It was the PERFECT day: High 50s.  Bright sun.  No wind. 

At first I scooped up armfuls of leaves and dumped them in the hopper.  Then I realized I could just flip over a leaf rake and use it like a shovel.  Wow.  No more bending.  My back applauded!

The leaves were bone dry and crispy so the nylon string shredder had no problem whizzing through them.  It reduced the leafs to maybe a 1/3 or even 1/4. 

Every 4 tubs I'd stop and haul the shreds out to the now-weeded ring bed.  At this reduction I figured straight off I wouldn't have enough to do the whole ring, so for now I just made sure all existing plants got well mulched.

The day went on.  In the end I got 18+ bins of out of the pile.  What with shredding, hauling, mulching and then cleanup I was at it for nearly 5 hours.  

Finally the last tarp was folded away and the remaining leaf litter put into compost.  Not a bad day's work.  And the ring bed?  Since the leaves had reduced as much as they did I only got slightly less than 2/3 of it mulched. (As I recall last year the shreds were coarser and reduced less than 1/2 so they went further as mulch.)

So now I have to wait for the sweet gums and silver maples to drop their load.  Then I'll just vac them up with the mower.  Hopefully I'll have enough then to finish the bed, but I dunno.  It looks dicey at this point.  We'll see....

(P.S.  Mom sure won't be getting the wacker back! LOL Mine-mine-mine!)

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