Our garden is not large, but does seem to accumulate an awful lot of blown-in organic rubbish. We used to have a cheapo own-brand garden vaccuum blower from one of the sheds, it sounded like a horde of dentists' drills on a scooter with a broken exhaust, and ceased to work a few weeks after the warranty expired
I'm looking for a replacement that does not need be too big, is relatively quiet, and good at hoovering - we have a bird table set on gravel, and it is the divils own backbreaking work to weed - hopefully a decent vac would suck of the seed before it starts to grow
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>>Our garden is not large<<
Could you not use a "Spring-tined" grass rake? Would be easier in the end without faffing about with cables/Petrol, simply rake into a corner and compost or wormery!
As for the "seed" problem, either fit a "seed-catcher" beneath the "Table" (make one out of an upturned dustbin lid maybe) or sneak out the wife`s best Dyson when shes not looking, if you really want to "Hoover" the gravel!! - why not give it a quick squirt of round-up now and again throughout spring/summer?
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I had a look at some - the electric ones would be no use here, I had a Flymo sucker at one point which did a good job - sadly I gave it away in a moment of weakness. I identified a blower/vacuum fitted our need here, it became stupid looking at 4 storkes and that - so I bought a pair of giant plastic hand shovels from a garden centre this time last year - this proved to be very good in for clearing snow as well. Best prices were Screwfix.
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I have a plastic picnic plate bolted to the bottom of the bird feeder at the caravan which catches most of the overspill.
The feeder hangs over the riverbank, so seed germination would do no harm, but the spilled seeds were attracting rats.
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Collared doves are the worst offenders! They feed with a side to side motion which scatters seed everywhere!
We have a small cornfield growing under our bird feeding station!
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We have about 25 trees in our garden and 4 large oaks in the field next to us.. So picking up leaves is a Autumn chore.
My next door neighbour used a petrol driven blower/shredder/collector. Very noisy and no use when leaves are wet. Surprisingly that's most autumn days.. and when they are wet and behind shrubs...!
I just rake and use a twin faced picker upper and deposit leaves into a large woven sack with two handles.
I collect about 40 sacks full a year and dump onto compost heaps to rot down.
Can I justify a petrol driven blower? (cables is out 60 metres plus and wind round things..)
Well it would shred the leaves.. Good.
Noisy and heavy. Bad.
Less work. Yes
Collect up wet leaves. No.
Used a lot? only 6 weeks in a year..
I made up my mind 20 years ago to continue by hand... As long as you do a little twice a week, good exercise and keeps you fit.
But leaves not shredded.. bad.
Can't justify £120 + of machinaery doing nothing 46 weeks a year..
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I used similar basis for my conclusion.....
These are similar to the manual thingies I use. As I say they can be used to scoop snow as well.
www.amazon.co.uk/Yeoman-Hand-Held-Leaf-Collector/dp/B003P3X33U/ref=sr_1_1?s=outdoors&ie=UTF8&qid=1320091139&sr=1-1
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Have a lot of leaves in my garden mainly from two large oaks on the boundary. I have found over the years that the best thing to gather them is a plastic lawn rake. Two pieces of wood make handy "paddles" to pick them up with and put them in a barrow. If you have a lot on the lawn a petrol rotary lawn mower with blades on a high setting ill pick them up and shred them at same time thus reducing bulk
I have a couple of leaf bins bade of chicken mesh in which I put the leaves to make leaf mold. Keep in damp and you will have a fine compost in 12 months.
I have a flymo leaf blower/vacuum but to be honest I don't use it much. It 's quicker to use a rake and they get very heavy when the bag is full of wet leaves. Can be useful for removing leaves from around plants where a rake might cause damage though.
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I have a large grape vine, and three large silver birch trees. A lot of leaves.
I rake them onto the lawn, then use the bosch electric rotary mower to suck them up, chop them up and compost them
Its not hard work, about 20 mins a week for about 10 weeks.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 31 Oct 11 at 20:17
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>> Keep in damp and you will have a fine
>> compost in 12 months.
But very low in nutritional value. Best used to improve the texture of the soil.
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Agree - Can't beat it as a soil improver and it's free!!!!
Does also make excellent mediumt for planting bulbs and as a basis of seed compost .
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I had a similar one to the Flymo above.
OK with dry leaves, hopeless with wet.
Spring rake and a pair of PLASTIC LARGE Hands (£5-£6) were better with wet leaves
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>> I had a similar one to the Flymo above.
>> OK with dry leaves, hopeless with wet.
>>
Much the same with my 'Power Devil' equivalent; luckily this year it's been very dry round these parts (until last weekend anyway) so I've managed to do most of the work with dry leaves.
Took me years to work out it's a lots less backache if you use the blower function to round up all the leaves into a big pile and then suck'em up, rather than 'Hoovering' over the entire garden.
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We have a lot of large, mature trees, most of them deciduous. Of course gales blow complete branches off the fir trees anyway, so you are always clearing up one way or another.
I'd go along with the spring tine rake and a large, wide plastic leaf-clearing rake idea, having discovered that machines are indeed a lot of faffing about for a relatively short time each year - and pretty useless if the season is wet. I'm always amazed at the number of council workers employed to blow leaves about every autumn over here, but that's part of the French protectionist employment strategy I guess. And they are useful for weeding municipal flower beds, painting white lines, cleaning the town hall windows, etc, etc, the rest of the year.
Our neighbours don't actually bother much with leaf clearing, so now neither do we. They say leaves feed the soil if you don't mind having them lying around while they decompose and I'd go along with that, even though chestnut leaves, in particular, can take a hell of a long time. It's part of the difference between having a garden, that needs to look tidy, and land that can just look 'natural'.
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My leaf picker upper is a 40 year old version of this..
www.garden-gear.co.uk/larger-tools/rakes/darlac-grabba-rake.htm
(Amazon are cheaper but this is a better picture)
These actually work better with wet leaves..
Edit 5 bag fulls this am.. makes 10 so far this Autumn...
(If we leave them we get 0.5metre drifts of oak leaves round the garages and front lawn...)
Last edited by: madf on Tue 1 Nov 11 at 11:16
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>> I'm always
>> amazed at the number of council workers employed to blow leaves about every autumn over
>> here, but that's part of the French protectionist employment strategy I guess.
I'm surprised that they pay so much attention to clearing leaves over there as they do here. I large part of my time in the Autumn is spent clearing leaves from paths, part of the 'elf 'n safety regime. If you didn't do it, no doubt someone would slip over and make a claim, but France doesn't do health and safety. Still, they haven't cut down all their trees in readiness for umpteen new housing developments, so I guess there are still a few leaves to clear. And it may be that they need more staff for maintaining verges. They tend to pave over everything here for easy maintenance (apart from a couple of weed spraying jobs). Saves money, yes, but it looks lifeless and boring in comparison. I guess it all started in the 60's when they discovered they could build everything with concrete.
Last edited by: corax on Tue 1 Nov 11 at 11:35
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Thanks to all, especially as dog, as that looks just the job (as long as it aint too noisy) and in budget.
I'm all in favour of hand tools, but the grabber type things aren't good for our back garden, as they grab more gravel than leaf, and they aren't particularly good at getting all the small stuff that comes from the potentilla hedge out the front.
We have thought about some sort of catcher under the bird table, but it would have to be flippin' big as the woddpigeons flap about and spread if all over the place and the sparrows sit on the seed feeder, eat one seed and then see how far they can throw the next nine......
I'd still rather sit in the conservatory watching the birds than sit indoors and watch most of what's on telly these days - since when did halloween become a major event for the BBC ?
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>>since when did halloween become a major event for the BBC ? <<
If, on a Saturday night they can broadcast X-Factor for an hour, follow that an hour later with a "results" show, then follow that with Xtra - Factor, then Halloween is far too big to ignore!
True, it seems to have had a lot of x-posure (Arggh! i`m brainwashed!!) this year but thats because there are so little decent Telly programmes nowadays.
All TV seems to be the type whereby they "con" the viewer into phoning-in and thereby reliving them of £1.50 (more from mobiles)and, even though their vote may not be counted, they will still be charged. Its almost turning into Pay-per-View!!
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>> If, on a Saturday night they can broadcast X-Factor for an hour, follow that an
>> hour later with a "results" show
Haven't done that for a couple of years now IIRC - they're clever enough to spread it over 2 nights (like Strictly). Time for more (money-making) voting I guess.
Last edited by: Focus on Tue 1 Nov 11 at 13:07
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They are mostly all noisy from my experience bora, I always use these when I'm sucking & blowing ~
tinyurl.com/5s8dc6n B & Q
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garden blower - recommendations please - devonite
