What’s pre-blowing?
The idea behind pre-blowing is saving man-hours on labor. Imagine you have leaf debris on your site or in your garden and you contemplate raking it up. It can be done easily in your garden; and being outside in fresh air is good for you, especially now, during a pandemic.
But on a larger scale, you can avoid a lot of extra raking by blowing your leafy debris onto your lawns before mowing. Just do it quickly. Remember, this isn’t your end of the day, thorough, clean up blow. All you have to do is push the bulk of your leafiness onto your lawns so it can mowed up.
Don’t crush your mower
Pre-blowing is effective from late summer and into early fall. That’s when the leaf drop is noticeable but it doesn’t require pile making. The idea, again, is to quickly push leafy debris onto your lawns and mow it up so you don’t have to rake.
Making and picking up piles is time consuming so it will delay your mowing. Pre-blows are meant to be quick jobs.
When the amount of leafy debris is significant, give up on pre-blowing. You can destroy your mower by forcing it to mulch massive amounts of leaves. It’s bad for the engine.
Commercial site example
Let’s consider one of my commercial sites as an example. When I pulled up on site one late summer Saturday morning, there was enough debris on site to justify a pre-blow.
I blew off the parking lot and beds full of Rhododendron leaves. Then I mowed it all up. Remember to slow down to give the mower time to shred the debris.
At the end of my service I only did a quick clean-up blow. I didn’t do any raking thanks to my pre-blow. And blowing is easier than raking.
Give pre-blowing a try!
