Obligatory “leave the leaves” if you can. Insects and small animals use the leaf litter and they’re good for soil creation (thanks, worms and fungi). Wondering why you don’t see as many lightning bugs/fireflies nowadays? Leave your leaves and they’ll have places to lay their eggs. Avoid becoming a member of the cult of the lawn!
I’m so angry. I had leaves for two years and the city made me remove them like right during the nesting period. So it’s gonna be another two years before I see an increase in fireflies.
My grandpa apparently went to war with the municipal council over his unmown meadow. Had a decent piece of land with wild flowers and grasses and all that. The story was told to me second-hand about 15 years ago and is at least 30-40 years old, but if I got it right, he mowed that land once per year in fall.
The council wasn’t happy with that, because he was supposed to mowed it twice per year, once in spring. Grandpa refused to cut down the flowers in their bloom, both because of all the things living in and off that and because pretty. Stern letter, discussions in person, deadline was set and went by. All the while, the “unkempt” non-lawn grew.
Eventually council imposed a fine. Obviously, a fine is supposed to compel a change in behaviour, but they couldn’t set deadlines tight enough or the initial fine high enough to actually hurt him, so he just paid his “fuck your lawns” fee year by year.
I believe they gave up at some point, but I’m not sure whether that’s just wishful thinking. In any case, that meadow was still growing wild and free when I was old enough to assist in the yearly mowing, long after his death.
Obviously, we can’t all afford to stick it to the local bean counters that stubbornly, but it’s nice to dream sometimes.
Depends on the climate and the number of trees. I understand wanting to leave all the leaves, but it’ll just create a muddy mess in my yard. I mulch them, it spreads through the yard. I circle around the trees and garden beds to get more leaves in those areas. Leftovers go on the composting pile.
Yeah the tree:land ratio of my back garden is highly in favour of the trees. Every autumn the entire area gets coated in a thick layer of sycamore leaves that can easily take a year to decompose even in a compost pile. I rake that shit into piles over my flowerbeds for the winter, then into the compost during the spring. I would mow them but it’s the UK so it’s rare to find an autumn day where the leaves aren’t too wet and soggy.
I leave all the leaves in my yard, and mine is the only one with a lot of fireflies. It’s amazing at night
Ewwww, there are bugs in my lawn‽ Kill them kill them kill them!
Oh no! Are there completely harmless animals outside?! How scary!
I look forward to seeing more electric leaf blowers. Sure they have a bit of an annoying high pitched whine when you’re close by, but you’re not going to hear it more than 5 meters away. I’ve also been seeing more electric lawn mowers which are also much quieter.
How about not having lawns in the first place?
I look forward to seeing less leaf blowers in general. I don’t get the obsession with getting rid of leaves. You’re damaging the local ecosystem for what? The ability to watch your grass turn brown?
Grass turns brown in the fall, for you? That usually only happens in the summer here, when we get heat waves. The grass is green every other time, covered or not covered.
Hi, leaf pilled person here. I still have a leaf blower to get them off my driveway. IN FACT! I use a leaf blower to get them off the pavement and onto the ground where they’ll be beneficial. They’re still a useful piece of equipment.
a broom would work better, be quicker, and not cause as much stress to your human and animal neighbors.
You severely overestimate how long it takes to blow my driveway. Well under five minutes. I do it less than once a month. Maybe once a week in the fall, if even. I think the animal neighbors in my dirt are happy for the leaves.
i think you’re overestimating how long it’d take to sweep.
I just use my bare hands personally. Green to the core
Hands have bacteria on them that might get killed.
I blow them away using air from my lungs.
The last part may be true, but the first two are definitely not.
Way to out yourself as someone who has never done manual labor.
no, i’ve just done enough, both with and without power tools, to know how to pick the right tool for the job.
if you need to blow some dirt off a road just to make it look nicer at the end of a roadworks project, or get the bulk of the small branches out of the way after a tree trimming, and don’t care about being thorough, then sure, i guess a leaf blower will get the job done (and you’ve been running much louder and heavier equipment all day, so who gives a fuck about the noise pollution).
but if you just want to clear some wet fallen leaves off a driveway so it looks nicer, i’d pick the pushbroom every single time. it’ll get the job done quicker, cleaner, and with far less making my neighbors hate me. having a leaf blower for personal use seems completely insane to me.
Yeah, it’s really crazy how much quieter the electric lawn tools are. It’s very noticeable.
I have an electric leaf blower, it’s pretty loud and you can definitely hear it >5m away, in fact you could probably hear it several hundred metres away. I do agree they are less disturbing overall though.
Where is the sound coming from to make it that noisy? Is it more the engine or the woosh?
It’s basically a big hair dryer, there’s a big fan in it
Da whoosh
I commonly use an electric leafblower for work, it’s loud as fuck
I am an all electric human as I can be.
Electric: mower, leaf blower, edger, chainsaw, pole saw, car, tiller.
Last thing to swap isy houses heat from gas but that is a major job that requires many upgrades.
Heat pumps are super nice. And they get better every year. But it is an investment.
I have two, one for the garage and one for my 2nd floor bedroom that doesn’t get much from the main HVAC unit. I even got the smallest units you can for those spaces and they are still too good and cool too much.
I’ve been thinking about doing a mini split for my office/upstairs bedroom, since that floor is always the hottest area of the home. Damn if the install cost isn’t as much as the damned equipment
My first install I used a DIY friendly version that came with pre charged lines. That went well and is still going strong after 4 years. That one was fine because you can’t shorten the lines but the run was long enough that there wasn’t a huge bundle of hoses. But the garage one I did the non DIY version. I already had a vacuum pump so I just bought the other few tools like the pip flaring tool and vacuum gauges. It’s actually a pretty simple process to DIY, just practice making the pipe flairs before doing it officially.
Good to know. Do you have any links or recommendations to look into?
Not really, mostly just watched install videos on YouTube. I watched pretty much all of them that came up. They all mostly agreed with each other except for the length of time to run the vacuum on the lines. But I guess it depends on the quality of the pump.
Man I want to replace my 2 cycle backpack blower now.
My handheld (Ryobi 20v, meh) is alright for cleaning the driveway or the deck, but if I want to actually move leaves around the heard, it’s weak.
I love my ego mower and my ego snowblower (although I only had one season with it so far and I think we got a total of 3 inches of snow, so…yea). An ego backpack blower would be tits.
Edit: holy shit those are expensive. But man I keep having to dump oil/gas mix because I can’t possibly use it up before it goes bad and the blower loses all its gusto. But pre-mix is ridiculously expensive (but works sooo much better).
People who unironically think this should go clean some leaves themselves and see how long they stick with the rake.
It’s always so much easier to tell other people how to do their job.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SORRY I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE NEIGHBOR BLOWING LEAVES AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
‘Cleaning’ leaves is stupid as hell anyway.
But I hate climate change and like bees
Depends if you’re going for most or all of the leaves. If you’re just going for most and you’re not incompetent, rake is easy and quick.
is a blower more fun, yes, do i drive a tank instead of a bike because of that? no
Our park ranger is a nice guy and I help him out from time to time, and we got talking about how leafblowers suck.
He said that yes they’re loud, but they are remarkably efficient at moving leaves into a nice pile, missing nothing
we got talking about how leafblowers suck.
In my experience, they tend to blow, even the good ones.
if your leafblower suck, there’s a switch for that. read the fucking manual before complaining
Forgot about this joke.
The “missing nothing” part is problematic. Many creatures rely on leaves to survive or reproduce. Fireflies are a common example. Their population has been decimated by the complete removal of leaves as standard practice
I cannot understand why people are so intent on removing every leaf from their yard
leafblowers suck
they literally do the opposite u idot 😤😡
no mebe u r 🫵
Yep, not even all the ecosystems that were nearly settling their lives there. Rakes are more gentle
TIL wind kills bugs
The problem is also with the fact that when there’s no leaves, bugs and other small animals have nowhere to stay over the winter or lay their eggs.
Sure, but a rake is as bad.
Unlike humans, who tolerate tornadoes blowing through their neighborhood without missing a beat.
Using the same principle as noise cancelling headphones, you could just blast an equally loud counter sound to negate the blower’s noise.
But where’s the fun in that?
Won’t work sadly, the “counter sound” can’t be in phase in multiple locations because of delay and reflections. Headphones can do ANC because the ear is basically a single point so the mic can pick up exactly what you’re about to hear and then compensate.
Using a speaker like that would just create double the leafblower noise.
How I wish active noise cancellation was a thing for rooms rather than just headphones.
This would be a game changer for people in multi-family housing.
Or leafblowers could include that as a mandatory feature
I mean, would they even hear anything over the leafblower?
Okay! I’ll make sure to blast my sirens at my neighbour next time he leafblows. That totally won’t get me in any trouble whatsoever lmao
For the lazy: song
That’s amazingly good and annoying at the same time.
I don’t mind leafblowers but don’t start at 8 AM IN THE MORNING
It’s my FAMILY TRADITION to blow leaves in every day of JANUARY you don’t understand god put them there to BE BLOWN
(not but really last January I heard so many leaf blowers. What are you blowing? Ghost leaves??)
Where I used to live, they would start at 7 AM. EVERY DAY, INCLUDING THE WEEKENDS.
I was tempted to buy a leafblower for myself, follow the leafblower guy around, and just throw all the leaves back at him.
Fuck them at all hours
My retired neighbor waits to do it on Sunday. I think he has a bottle of 2 stroke oil on his nightstand beside the tissue box
I got you, I’ll start it at 10pm after so you won’t have to see it.
