some of my leaves go on the bonsai trees for winter,some go in the compost bin,but most of them stay on the lawn and i rake them in the spring.come spring time my lawn is green about 3 weeks before evryone eleses is.

I'm also offering to furnish bags. Going to add to compost ,till in veggy garden. And add to flower beds. One of my customers has huge timber -they are bagging leaves for me this week. Wish I had bagger for my rider.

I've started mowing them. I deliberately left my grass long so when I mow the leaves there's some green material mixed in. I pile them up about knee deep in the cleared off garden, let my kids stomp on them, wet them down really well and cover with sheets of plastic weighted down and let them "cook" all winter. If I had enough perforated landscape fabric that would be even better. Yes, it does take a while for my garden soil to warm up in the spring but it has improved my clay soil dramatically. I keep meaning to put a little horse manure in there too --after I let the kids stomp the leaves -- then cover them up.

I also use them to mulch my roses. But I have a LOT of leaves so I finally just end up pileing the shredded leaves in an enormous pile behind the garage where they aren't an eyesore for the neighbors and let them rot down all winter. I will use that leaf mold to side dress plantings or as mulch in the early part of the summer.

Unfortunately, using the bagger on the rider doesn't really work that well. It fills up in about 2 minutes. I use the rider to mow them and direct them into quasi-piles then run the pusher over them to suck them up or I rake them into the garden cart to haul to where I want them. I usually wait until most of the leaves are off my maples before I embark on this project. My husband just had hernia surgery so you can guess who's going to be doing the bulk of the yard work this fall.

Leaf burning is also allowed in Collins. I hate it. The whole neighborhood smells of smoking wet leaves, you can't hang out laundry or open the windows. Do we really need to release all that smoke into the atmosphere! At least in Marshalltown the city composts them.

Maria

Always compost them.

The first batch that fell so slowly and beautifully went into the shredder and into the compost.

The second batch, on the day after the shredding, fell like the last spring snow while I raked (some of) them to the curb for the sucker truck. When the truck came by about two hours later, it was hard to tell that I had raked at all.

Those leaves were raked and stock piled in case we run short of leaves later when we're decorating for Thanksgiving.

The third batch, the ones that fell between Thursday and last weekend, went through the mower and they're feeding the lawn.

The fourth batch that fell overnight on Sunday (they're getting sneaky!) was rounded up and used to stuff pillows. I have almost all my Christmas gifts finished!

The current batch of leaves is still on the lawn, and they are all golden and crispy - great with dip! I have some other tasty recipes, too, if I can just find them.

The oaks on the boulevard have just started to drop their leaves, so I supposed I'll also be able to knit oakleaf afgans for everyone on the block before the snow falls.

At least with snow, it melts ;~)