Eric in North Texas wrote:
Mowing with a mulching mower is a good partial solution for anyone that
has lots of trees nearby. You can do it in the beginning, and you can
do it at the end of the leaf fall period. But if you have a property
surrounded by trees, there is no alternative to removing them. If you
mulch that many, you will bury and kill the turf.

I beg to differ, I'm not only surrounded by trees, it is our main
theme, we have around 100 trees and that is probably a conservative
estimate. Around 50 % of those are pines, so no leaf problem there, but
there are 30+ fruit / nut trees 2 large oaks, some many decades old
most around 15 yrs old, so we generate a few leaves. I mow wide open
throttle with an open discharge chute & use high vac bagging blades, it
comes out as a coarse powder.


If 50% of your trees are pines, then you must recoginze that you have a
much different situation, with far less leaves than someone who has a
house surrounded on 3 sides by woods with large trees with heavy
leaves. Also, consider what it would be like if those fruit trees
were instead oaks, that grow much larger and produce far more leaves.
It doesn't matter how fine of a powder you turn leaves into. If you
try to do that with enough of them and don't remove the ground leaves,
it will cover and kill the grass.

I agree mulching can work up to some point. I do it myself. But if
you have a house surrounded on 3 sides by nearby dense woods with lawn
in between, it doesn't work. You can do it some in the beginning, and
you can do it again near the end of the process. But much of the
leaves have to be removed, one way or another.