Re: (ET) Mulch-envy

["Pieter Litchfield" <pieter_litch yahoo com>]

Oaks are acidic, so the clippings would need more nitrogen to break down. I
have several white pines (also acidic) which I don't want to mulch, but
rather pick up.  I use a Sears pull behind lawn sweeper to pick up my 
leaves
and needles intact.  Mt=y E-12 mower  doesn't do much of a mulching job, 
and
I have way too many leaves for even a good mulching mower of any kind to
process.  I do some raking by hand , some blowing with a two cycle hand 
held
blower, and some sweeping.  It all goes into a monster compost pile which
gets "flipped over" occasionally and has some additives to excite it a bit.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Alburty [mailto:willaim kc rr com] 
Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2012 3:58 PM
To: elec-trak cosmos phy tufts edu
Subject: (ET) Mulch-envy

Thank you both for the mulching advice. But I have mulch-envy for my
neighbor's ICE Toro ZTR which sprays out very small sand size particles and
dust. That output I think will actually help the lawn as fertilizer. 
My ET output is, at best, 1/2 inch pieces of leaves. In the case of pin oak
leaves, they seem to have a long lasting leathery quality and are slow to
decompose. I think they actually degrade the lawn by sticking to bare 
places
and making over-seeding ineffective. The ET is especially bad with deep
leaves also as it pushes big piles ahead of itself. I think it can be 
better
than this.

Bill Alburty, E-12, Kansas

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