Hello,

I hope you can help.

How to handle having to rake up fallen leaves on new baby grass?

We have a ton of oak/maple trees that lose all their leaves between October and December. You can't imagine how much raking we do in the Fall. We just moved in last year.

Well, we need to plant grass seed for the front/side yard.

The front has been taken over by ?wild violets and weeds. The side doesn't grow any grass, but moss.

So we plan to plant grass seeds early September, so that really only gives us 1month before the leaves fall.

My plan is to remove weeds, aerate, put down topsoil/compost, seed, water, and baby the new grass.

But what am I to do when the leaves fall? I can't leave them there, because they'll block out sunlight (yes, we have a lot of leaves).

I don't want to drive over it w/ our lawn-tractor to suck up the leaves, killing the new growth. Even raking involves walking on it.

Would love your advice per your experience, etc.

thank you very much,

Amanda