I think that this year I am just going to use a piece of 1/4" steel to make a block off plate and get some wavy low lifts for the leaves. The Micro-Mulch kit was crazy expensive and I am not even sure I can get it for the CT anymore.
What size deck do you have? I've got 48 and 52 inch mulching kits for the tri-vantage deck.
Edit: Now that I'm at a real keyboard I can describe how I dealt with leaves with my Lazer Z HP and Ultra-Vac which your machine is just a slightly cheaped-out version of.
(Note: that machine is now just a back-up and for mowing my back acreage).
I tried using the Micro-Mulch kit for leaves on both of my Exmarks and it works well in the early season when I could make most accumulations disappear in one or two passes. But for thick and/or wet leaf cover and in areas where the leaves had concentrated it just took too many passes to give a clean enough look for my standards and sometimes it just didn't give acceptable results.
Another method I have used I don't think I'd recommend for you because I'm not sure your engine and spindles are up to it. I put 2 precision-balanced blades on per spindle in a + arrangement, one Gator and one high lift with my discharge chute down. It basically turns the machine into a combination blower and mulcher. What I do is cut in 2 or 3 passes around the edges and obstacles clockwise to blow everything inwards. Then I do my back and forth straight passes. The high velocity of the discharge blows the next row to be cut nearly clear of leaves to the point that when I do the pass facing towards the cut grass the few remaining leaves are mulched and dispersed well by the double blades. When I get to the end of lawn I grind up the pile that have been blown there and throw on my catcher or hook up my Ultra-Vac and pick them up. You can alternately stake down a tarp and use the mower to blow them onto it or use that old-fashioned rake or a blower or just grind them to dust.
My preferred method is to run a set of Gator mulchers. First I use a backpack blower to blow the leaves off of hard surfaces and from around obstacles out to where I can get at them with my mower. Then with the Ultra-Vac unit off (I keep the hopper on at all times) I run around and grind up the leaves to about dime sized, sometimes running backwards to run leaves over that want to run away. After they're all ground up nicely I put the Ultra-Vac unit on and pick up the ground up leaves. You can regulate how many of them you pick up with your cutting height. You can raise up a bit to leave the well-ground leaves and dust to decompose or drop it down to try to pick up the majority of it. The resulting leaf mulch is great for composting and for use in the vegetable garden for weed control.
And finally, there's a hybrid method where I do the same as above but with the Ultra-Vac unit on at all times. Gator blades. Again I blow the leaves to where I can get at them. But then I run around and pick up leaves until the bagger clogs, and I just keep going with it clogged, essentially running it as a closed mulching deck. On my unit the Ultra-Vac will keep running clogged and will not stall and burn/destroy the belt. I can't do that with my Bob-Cat and you should make sure that you can with yours. Running the bagger impeller is an additional draw on the machine so you can't run over big piles as easily without straining the engine, but you can raise the deck in the areas of heavy accumulation. After I grind up what I think is a full bagger load of leaves, I unclog the unit, dump the partially ground leafs in the hopper back onto the ground and bag and dump until I'm out of ground up leaves and repeat the process. The reason I started doing it this way is once I ground up the leaves on a large heavily-littered lawn and an afternoon shower came through and got everything wet. It was like trying to pick up wet cardboard!
