The massive sycamore (Platanus × hispanica) in our neighbor’s front yard provides valuable shade for her house, but in the fall, it becomes the bane of my existence. It produces a seemingly endless stream of leaves – large leaves that curl up and are difficult to dislodge with a leaf blower.
 |
| Our neighbor’s sycamore at the very beginning of its leaf drop |
Because of our prevailing winds (typically from the north), a lot of the sycamore leaves get blown our way. The most immediate destination is the driveway bed my friend Kyle helped me redo last December (see here). This bed is full of hechtias, agaves, and aloes – spiky, toothy, and/or prickly plants that trap the leaves and make manual removal painful.
In an effort to make my life a little easier, I decided to try something new: bird netting, like you would use in an orchard to prevent birds from eating the fruit. And it seems to be doing the trick. Here’s a photo of the leaves piling up on our neighbor’s side instead of being blown into ours:
The netting I bought comes in a
7 × 100 ft. roll. To get good coverage, I had to overlap three layers, but since they’re not connected in the middle, a strong wind will blow them apart. As a result, some leaves do end up under the netting:
Plan A (the current netting, 7 × 100 ft. with an 0.8 × 0.8 in. mesh size) is proof of concept, but because of the overlapping layers, it’s not as effective as I want. Plan B will be a big improvement:
25 × 50 ft. netting that will cover the bed completely. It’s too windy to install it today, but I will as soon as the wind has died down.
I should have plenty of netting left over for the area you see below, basically an extension of the driveway bed. Once I’ve removed all the leaves that are there now, I’ll throw netting over this bed as well.
This is an experiment that may not yield perfect results, but even if it cuts down on leaf accumulation by half, it will be a big improvement. That would be a big help, considering our neighbor’s sycamore will shed leaves for another 6 to 8 weeks.
© Gerhard Bock, 2024. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.
That is one huge tree! I hope your temporary solution does the trick. The leaves of multiple liquidamber trees across the street from us blow in our direction but the hedge running along the street seems to keep the bulk of them out of my garden beds - and the gardeners who tidy up both our yards on a weekly basis thankfully vacuum up the majority of what accumulates.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbors to the north have no trees so I don't have to deal with that . I like to make compost so my own leaves (one birch and two Crepe Myrtles) either stay on the ground or go into the compost bin. Once leaf drop is over I'll get my shop-vac out and suck up all the leaves that are stuck in the agaves, yuccas and cordylines and empty them into my compost. I like your solution too. I think I parked in the shade of that Sycamore when I visited last month !
ReplyDelete