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A standard home lawn mower with sharp blades can handle a thin layer of leaves without issue. You may need to make a couple of passes within several days to mulch leaves down, but your mower shouldn’t struggle. If your mower comes with a mulching kit, like an attachment to blow leaves out the side, that’s a good sign it’s ready for fall leaves. Set your mower to the highest or near-highest height for this project so it focuses on the leaves rather than the grass below.

The best way to landscape your front yard on a budget is to invest in hiring a professional for hardscaping—things like upgrading walkways, redoing driveways, and installing partitions around garden beds. You can often do the softscaping yourself—think laying down mulch, caring for your lawn, removing weeds, and planting flowers and shrubs. It’s also almost always worthwhile to pay a professional for routine yard maintenance, as this dramatically improves curb appeal and delivers above 100% ROI in most cases.

To prepare your lawn for core aeration, water it the day before you aerate. (Alternatively, you can wait until it rains and aerate the following day.) Aerating after watering or a rainy day will make the process easier since you can penetrate moist soil better than dry soil. You should also flag your sprinklers so that you don’t accidentally hit them while aerating. If you have a lot of thatch buildup in your yard, you might need to dethatch your lawn before aerating as well.

This depends on how many leaves there are. Mowing over dry and crisp leaves with a bagging attachment saves most homeowners a lot of time. If you have a smaller lawn and few leaves to mulch, you can put the leaves into a stand-alone mulcher resembling a wood chipper and collect the mulch from a hopper. This prevents having to do multiple passes with a mower.