Shredding and mulching leaves with lawn mower.

I use my exisiting lawn mower to shred leaves.  This answers many questions regarding building or making your own leaf shredder or mulcher.  I have highlighted the steps I do to shred leaves.  My yard is full of oak leaves and this works really good.

Run your lawn mower in discharge mode.  Direction of mower depends upon the discharge side.  Idea is to collect leaves in a pile.  My mower discharge to right so I run it clockwise as shown in figure 1.  The size of the pile depends how many leaves you have.  If you get too many leaves then your mower may start stalling.

Iclose the discharge chute and convert my mower in to mulching mode and run it over the partially shredded leaves pile.  You will be amazed in the reduction in the volume of leaves at this stage.

Once the leaves are completely shredded, I use the bag attachment to collect all the shredded leaves and throw them in my compost.  Easy and simple. I think.