I've got .70 acres, and 6 massive Oak trees (plus a dozen other kinds behind the house). I collect them into a pile, use a leaf shredder on top of my yard waste bin. And then leaf bags to supplement. I attempted to mow them the first year here, and there was so much shredded leaf leftovers it killed large sections of my grass.
I got this from Amazon for my work. It’s the size of a Webber grill (maybe a little bigger) and you just take handful by handful and drop it through. It comes out the bottom totally shredded. It makes compost decompose so much faster when everything is chopped smaller. I take it out to the garden every couple months (during the cold season) and chop everything to bits and put it back into the compost areas. It helps speed up the process to have all the bits chopped up finer.
They work ok for a small to moderate amount of leaves. If you have enough leaves though, you end up being limited by the throughput of the chute/impeller. I often found myself just sitting there forever waiting to get through my pile of leaves.
I personally switched away from using them and now have a worx mulcher that can churn through much more in a given amount of time. Same approach though. You just blow the leaves into a pile, then use leaf grabbers or something like that to drop leaves into the top, then pass through into a bag.
I would not dump the mulched leaves on your yard. That is asking for disease and/or chemical imbalances.
My cousin used to chop her own hay — she got a leaf/grass mulcher - something similar to this and would attach a bag underneath to catch the chopped hay — you can also soak/ wet it down it afterwards if you want to be extra safe
I think it might depend on the number of trees. We have 6 in our back yard and it gets covered super fast around this time of year. I can't wait till they are all gone. I don't have a rotary mower, but I wouldn't want to have to cover every square inch of the yard if I did. I also feel like mulched leaves make the yard dirty and contribute to tracking stuff inside.
I duel wield 40v greenworks leaf blowers and work from the back of the house and blow them all towards our back fence. At the back fence, i get them into one or a couple piles. I then mulch them into bags through a worx leaf mulcher. This is nice because you don't have to shove leaves into bags. You just roughly drop large bunches of leaves into it and pick the unit up to replace the bag every so often. It pretty much churns through them as fast as you can feed them in.
Look into leaf mulcher like this one. It claims it can turn your 90 bags into 9!
Our local tool library just decided to buy one for this season, and I'm looking forward to trying it out! While I haven't used that model, I have shredded my leaves before.
Last year I ran my leaves backwards through my leaf blower (it has a shredder option), and I really liked using that as my carbon for the year. I kept it moist in a garbage bag through the winter and it started to compost (via fungus) on it's own. I've heard letting that process continue leads to leave mold (a good soil conditioner in it's own right).
I don't believe I got it to proper 'leaf mold' status, but I noticed a huge difference when it ran out and I started using my neighbors bag of leaves from last year (I also appreciate my neighbors taking the time and putting their collected leaves on the curb...). The leaves I shredded and kept damp were better.
sweet! I've been thinking of getting this guy for mulching.
Most of the leaves I get are already bagged from my neighbor's property, so i think it might be a worthwhile investment... just haven't pulled the trigger yet
Worx 13 Amp Electric Leaf Mulcher with 11:1 Mulch Ratio and Fold-down Compact Design – WG430 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002MAPZYC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_nd5hCb0WKBAW6
It's on my list to buy, uses string to shred it into bags below alrdy. 11:1 ratio.
Some tips for you if you have a LOT of leaves:
1) Run over them with a lawn mower to break them up or run them through a shredder like this - WORX Leaf Mulcher
So are these WORX WG430 13 Amp Electric Leaf Mulcher https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002MAPZYC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_6SYCETGXT776RBCKNJSC?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Worx leaf mulcher. Cheap way of cutting down your piles. I am not sponsored to say this. Just referring to a tool I like to use.
This is what /r/composting recommends https://www.amazon.com/Worx-Amp-Electric-Leaf-Mulcher/dp/B002MAPZYC