Cleaning up yard

[RoyIA]

I have many trees that shed twigs and branches whenever the wind blows like it is doing now.
What do you use to clean up besides bending over and picking them up and throwing them in a cart or trailer?

 

[Zachary Hoyt]

If they're under pencil sized I use a leaf rake and a manure fork. If they're much bigger I just have to pick them up, usually.
Zach

 

[Cienna]

Leaf rake and manure fork, like Zach H said. And don't plant Austree's---Austree---That's their name. They're the dirtiest tree there is. Every time there's a wind over 15 mph, you've got dead branches on the ground.

 

[Big Irish]

I wonder how one of those pull behind lawn sweepers would work? You might still have to pick up the bigger ones. Just a idea.

 

[KSTractor]

I rake my whole lawn with a rotary hay rake [Deutz KS85] set it lower than you would for raking hay so it scratches the ground gets all the dead grass off real good .

 

[Leroy]

You must have a wide open and large yard, you would never get that rake in a yard like mine.

 

[ddl]

i keep an old riding mower for that purpose and cut them into mulch. the bigger ones i pick up as i ride beside them and throw them in a trailer i pull. lazy i know but like the commercial i refuse to spend my whole weekend on yard duty.

 

[Dick L]

I mow close to a quarter of a mile of road side on a State road. This seems to be an ideal place for people to chuck out their plastic bottles and fast food wrappers. I find that after the third mowing the pieces have disappeared. Same with the twigs in the yard. If the clever passers by don't like how it looks until it is fine enough to not be seen then don't chuck the junk out. If the trees don't like the looks then quit dropping the twigs.
Just a stoved up 73 year old mans opinion. ^D

 

[bison]

Move into a high rise apparment.
problem solved.

 

[old]

All I do is mow and be done with them as long as they are small enough to mow them and cut them up. Bigger ones I pick up and throw in the trash pile and they get burned with the trash

 

[big fred]

big ones get picked up as I mow and tossed over the fence. Small ones get cut up by the mower, really big ones (anything that's heavy enough to require two hands to lift) gets carried over to the edge of the hill and tossed down into the ravine.

 

[showcrop]

Mow them.

 

[molinebob]

Them pull behind lawn sweepers do not work very good, been there done that!! The branches will either stop it dead in the tracks or the branches will wrap around the brushes and just stay there until you stop and unwind them....Bob

 

[GordoSD]

A cat expired on the edge of my lawn last November. I had forgotten about it. My first mowing this spring was on 29 April. It wasn't pretty when I "found it". It had been frozen solid for 5 months. On 6 May, it became a lot of fur balls. Yesterday it pretty much went away.

 

[bill mart]

heres a small article on the Austree!
link to austree

 

[TomH in PA]

"big ones get picked up as I mow and tossed over the fence"

Tried that, neighbor keeps tossing them back...

 

[big fred]

Neighbor? There's your problem. My fence line is about 15 ft my side of the property line. when I toss something over the fence, it ends up in the blackberry jungle that forms a visual barrier between me and the neighbors. After that is a ditch that defines the property line.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Yeah, been through the multiflora rose nightmare.

 

[Anonymous-0]

My comment should have been down below.

 

[TomH in PA]

Was kidding of course, but the fence is on the property line:

 

[JML755]

(quoted from post at 00:31:52 05/13/11) I have many trees that shed twigs and branches whenever the wind blows like it is doing now.
What do you use to clean up besides bending over and picking them up and throwing them in a cart or trailer?

Depends upon whether it's on my lawn or at my country property. At home, I just run over them with the lawnmower. If they're still there when I go over them, I wait until the dogs come out to play. Then I'll throw the bigger ones and the dogs fetch them and then chew them into smaller pieces which the mower will take care of next mowing. (I don't worry about my lawn looking like a golf course)

At my country property, they get run over by the brush hog or DR brush mower. If they're too big to run over, they get pulled off into the woods to rot or chainsawed up for the better stuff. But with the amount of trees I have I don't worry too much about seeing a stick on the ground.

 

[RoyIA]

I hava at least a hundred Austrees. They are at least 15 years old. I have only had a couple die from the first planting. Biggest problem is too much shade from mature Ash trees in some locations. I found that you cannot replace one that dies because the surrounding trees take all the water. I also have a very large weeping willow. It is as dirty as the Austrees.
I use a 5 foot wide spike tooth harrow to rake them and drag them to the burning pile. This is not the greatest. I have thought about converting a 2 row cornstalk chopper by adding a hopper above and behind the flails. Just dreaming I guess.