4 TIPS FOR USING A CHIPPER-SHREDDER

I spent many, many hours dealing with leaves last weekend. I say "dealing with" because removing the leaves from the lawn and getting them to their final resting place involves a series of machines and every once in awhile an actual human-powered rake.

My method mostly involves using our lawn tractor to mulch and bag the leaves on the lawn and then to run them over to the chipper-shredder, run them through that, then add them to the compost bin.

A quick break for a disclaimer: Both the lawn tractor and chipper-shredder I have came from Troy-Bilt and were given to me to test as part of my work for them as part of their Saturday6 blogging team. (You can read my reviews of them here and here.)  Of course I've not been told what to say and all opinions are my own. I was not asked to write this post, but since I'm using Troy-Bilt tools in it, I wanted to give you the full spiel.

Because there were a lot of leaves down, it didn't take me long to suck up two bags full with the mower bagger. So I fired up the chipper-shredder about every 10 minutes. Repeatedly.

Which means that I have a whole new slew of tips about using a chipper-shredder. The one I have is the largest and most powerful model that Troy-Bilt makes, but it's still a homeowners' version, as will most chipper-shredders that people use at their homes will be. The point is, don't expect these machines to do what professional model chipper-shredders, like you see arborists and city street crews using, do.

Here are a few tips I picked up from lots of firsthand experience over the course of the summer and particularly into fall.

A closeup of leaves after shredding.

1. A LITTLE BIT AT A TIME

Chipper-shredders have a ton of safety features built into them, which is good, particularly if you've ever seen the movie "Fargo." Pretty much the only ways you can get yourself in trouble are sticking your hands into the machine (which is not easy to do) or not wearing eye protection in case something comes flying out of it (which I've not experienced but I don't take chances with my eyes).

But one sure way to block the whole program up is to try to put too much through it at one time. If you put too many leaves in the hopper at one point, nothing gets sucked through, so in order to clear it you either have to turn the machine off, pull everything out and start over or start poking around with a large stick. Yes, I did that. Yes, I realize you should absolutely NEVER EVER do that. But the first method for clearing is a big drag.

Better you just avoid any of it by putting in small amounts of material at one time. This meant that instead of just dumping the entire collection bag from the mower into the hopper, I would gradually pour it out. This took a little more time but it was much faster than constantly stopping to clear the clog.

2. DRIER IS BETTER

I started working on my leaf collection project first thing in the morning when the leaves were still  covered in dew so they were pretty wet. What I found was the damper the material I was putting in was, the more likely the machine was to clog and the smaller the amount I put in at one time needed to be. Once I figured it this out things went smoothly, but upon further review, I think I would have saved a lot of time if I had just waited for the sun to dry everything off before I started putting stuff through the shredder.

The same goes for other garden waste. I also put through most of what I cut out of the garden. This was harder as stems and other plant material didn't drop to the bottom of the hopper as easily as leaves, but I got around that by doing some strategic loading. Small bundles at a time were needed.

By shredding all my leaves I was able to fit them all in the compost bin.

3. RESPECT SIZE LIMITS

My chipper-shredder can grind up branches up to 3 inches in diameter and it does a great job with it. In fact, I wish I had more branches to put through it because it makes the best mulch I've ever seen. But when they say 3 inches, they mean 3 inches. I put a branch that was probably only 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter in it and it ate it all up, until it got to a big knot, or maybe where it had attached to another branch, which was bigger than 3 inches and it stopped it up good. This, of course, meant  stopping the whole thing, making very sure that all the parts were finished spinning, and then going in there to pull it out, which was not easy.

4. KEEP THE BAG STRAIGHT

I suppose that there are different kinds of collection systems for different chipper-shredders. But on the one I have, there is a long bag that attaches to the chute. I quickly found out that it's crucial that the bag is laying flat on the ground, not twisted. When you start up the machine it's obvious when all is right because the bag will inflate.

I would estimate that shredding the leaves I collected about doubled the time I spent on that project last weekend. That's not an insignificant amount of time. But what I ended up with was lovely, tiny bits of leaves that will break down very quickly and all fit in my compost bin. I've always saved leaves, but before I shredded them, I would just keep them in piles by the compost bin, allowing some to break down by themselves for leaf mould and I'd add the rest to the compost as needed. In either case, the decomposition process took a long time.

My hope is that with everything so nicely shredded, I'll have a lot of finished compost to use by late spring or early summer. If that is the case, the extra work will have been well worth it.

Really good compost requires layering green material with brown material at a ratio of about 1-to-20. Comfrey is a great plant for the compost, so I cut all the leaves off my comfrey patch and layered them on top of shredded leaves. There is so much moisture in these leaves that it was difficult to shred them without it ending up like it had been through a juicer, but they will still break down quickly. After everything starts breaking down, I'll give the pile a good stir to aerate it and add water if necessary.

There are more leaves still to fall, of course, and even though the compost bin is getting pretty full (I've been dutifully layering it with greens as well), I have plans for the rest of the shredded leaves I'll produce. More and more I've been reading about the importance of fall mulching of garden beds, and finely shredded leaves are a perfect material for that. They will certainly be put to good use there. I also like to heavily mulch the roots of some of the less hardy plants I grow, so shredded leaves (which won't blow away) will be great for that too.

Because this is my first year shredding leaves (although we've mulched them with the mower for a few), I won't really know if the extra step was worth it until next year, but I have to think it is.

THE STATE OF THE GARDEN (AKA WHAT'S HAPPENING)

There are so many things happening in the garden at this time of year. Sometimes I feel like I mention something and then completely forget to give you an update on it. So today I'm tying up a few loose ends.

GARDEN CLEANUP
A couple weeks ago I mentioned my new strategy for getting the garden in shape: Take one garden area at a time and finish it completely before moving on to the next. It should come as no surprise that I grossly underestimated how long this would take, but I'm happy with the progress I've made.

I spent most of one day working on the circle garden which is now looking pretty good. The chive hedge I planted last year has just started blooming and I absolutely love it. So much, that I've decided to continue it around the entire perimeter of that segment of the circle garden. I need a few more chives to surround it (I'm hoping to take a few off my mom's hands or else it will have to wait until I can divide what is there), and eventually I would like hedge the other two segments of that garden.

There are a lot of bare spots in this garden (actually, all of my gardens, which is something I'm discovering as I free them from weeds), so filled them in with 75 kale seedlings. I planted Redbor kale seedlings in one segment and Lacinato in the other two. If they grow well, and I hope they do, I think it will be a really interesting look to the garden. Maybe by the end of summer I'll be able to call the circle garden (which is very much an oval) the kale garden.

See the vetch trying to eat that hosta? Edited: Upon further review, I don't think this actually is vetch. If you know what it is, let me know! I also see a maple seedling there and some jewelweed off to the right. So much weeding, so little time.

We've had a very wet and cool spring and the amount of weeds is astonishingly. Some kind of vetch (see note in caption) seems to have taken over the garden and I'm literally pulling it out by the handful.

POTATO TOWERS

The potato towers are finally starting to show some signs of life. As you can see, there are plenty of shoots popping out and up. I've been "hilling up" the compost on the top of towers as the shoots grow. Other than that, I've done very little with the towers since I planted them. I have occasionally taken the hose and made an attempt to water the entire thing, but that's about it. I'm starting to lose hope that the entire tower will be covered in green leaves, but there is a long summer of growing to go yet so we'll see.

COMPOST BIN

Although I still need to transfer in the unfinished compost from the previous location, I've started layering future compost. On top is nepeta trimmings and under it is shredded paper I picked up from work. Above, you can see the new location of the compost bin. I didn't meant to tuck it in so close to that tree, but I had already dug the trench for it and I didn't feel like redigging it, so that's where it's standing. I'll just trim the tree around it.

I successfully moved the compost bin and ended up going with the sunnier location by the vegetable gardens. I actually tucked it a little more under the tree than I intended to, but once I dug out the trench to level it, I wasn't going to dig it again, so that's where it ended up. There was some lovely finished compost lurking at the bottom of the bin that I've been happily using. I'm throwing all the unfinished bits back in and starting to make some new layers as well. Because its the time of year for lots of greens (plant trimmings and kitchen waste; I never put in weeds), I got a supply of newsprint trimmings from work to serve as "browns" in the pile until some fallen leaves are available in autumn.

TOMATO STAKING

A few brave tomatoes have made an appearance but I don't see them ripening any time soon.

It has not been very summerlike here so the tomatoes have done very little growing, but so far my new method of staking is working out pretty well. One of the jute strings broke off at ground level. I'm hoping this does not happen to the rest. I had some excess at the top so I lowered that and tucked the bottom back into the soil as firmly as I could.


GARAGE

The "before" shot of the garage taken last fall. Check out that mossy roof!

Hallelujah, I found someone to paint the garage and with luck it will be finished by the end of the week. With all the work there is to do in the garden as well as a very busy sailing schedule (pretty much every weekend from now through August), I knew I wouldn't have time to do all that scraping and painting and I didn't want to look at an unfinished garage all summer.

I ended up choosing Ozark Shadows for the siding color (the top right in these photos), which was a favorite of many people. The trim will be Simply White, which is the same color as on the deck.

RAIN BARREL

The rain barrel we put on the corner of the garage is already proving its value, even if I think it's pretty ugly. The garden by the garage is right on the edge of reach of both hoses, so it has been very nice to be able to water that area from it. There's not enough pressure in the hose to actually spray water, but it works great to just set by the base of new plants and give them a good soaking.

NEW BACK/SIDE GARDEN
It's finished. Well as finished as any first-year garden ever is. I keep waiting for a nice day to take some photos, and that never seems to happen. I'll show you soon and hope that the deer don't eat it in the meantime (they've already munched my Sweet Summer Love clematis to the ground).

That's what's been happening here. What's up in your garden?

A COMPOST CONUNDRUM

One of the trees we took down in our latest round of tree trimming and (dead tree) removal was an evergreen that the compost bin was located next to. Even though the only thing that shielded the bin was a (rather large) bare trunk, it somehow made the placement of the compost bin make sense. Now that the tree is gone the bin is RIGHT THERE and seems to have been plunked right in the middle of the yard.

As you approach our house from the road, the first view you get of our house is through the trees, with the compost pile right in the middle of the view.

Yep, not so attractive.

Moving a compost bin isn't that big of a deal. It's actually a really good excuse to give the pile a proper turning and pull out the remainder of finished compost (which is at the bottom, still frozen solid). The problem is where to move it to.

Even though I think my compost bin isn't too visually offensive, it's not exactly charming. And of course there are ways to screen a bin. But the easiest way to deal with a compost bin, is to stick it somewhere that is convenient to access but completely out of your line of sight.

I've come up with two potential places to move it to. One is just about 10 feet behind where the bin is now, tucked up under a couple large evergreens. The other is over by the raised vegetable gardens, shielded from the road by another large evergreen.

OPTION 1

You can see where I've started moving the pile already, but now I'm rethinking the placement.

OPTION 2

That bare spot sort of by that pine tree would be a sunnier location for the pile. 

I have no doubt that the second location is the one that is better for compost production. It's a sun vs. shade situation and material breaks down much faster the warmer it is. Organic matter will, of course, decompose no matter what, but the speed at which that happens is affected in part by temperature.

The second location is also better from a "shield from the road" perspective. One of the things I dislike the most about the current location is that now that the tree is gone, the very first thing you see when you are driving up to our house is the compost bin. "Welcome friends, please put your fruit and veggie kitchen waste in the bin as you leave."

But I'm pretty sure we would see the bin from the house if we look that direction. And there's a chance I might someday want to claim that bit of sun for another raised bed. And, to be perfectly lazy about it ... it's a much longer way to move a pile.

I've got plenty of time to think about it. The bottom of the pile is absolutely a frozen block of ice. I tried to jam a shovel in it over the weekend and chips of ice literally flew out. Maybe that's one more thing to think about: if I move it to the shadier spot, I probably won't have a thawed pile until July.

Giving the compost a little help

Composting purists would not at all approve of the way I compost, but frequent readers of this blog know I appreciate the K.I.S.S. principle (even though that acronym reminds me of a bad kitty poster in my third-grade classroom). This means that I don't overthink composting, and generally just throw the stuff in the bin, knowing that nature will do its thing eventually. (This of course doesn't include any animal products, other than dog hair, which is plentiful around here, fats, perennial weeds or diseased plants.) Another word for it would be laziness.

Anyway, if you're composting properly, you are keeping a close eye on the ratio of browns to greens (essentially carbon-rich material to nitrogen-rich material). And since it's natural to have a lot of browns in fall and early spring and a lot of greens throughout summer, technically you are supposed to story the overflow of this material in a separate pile or holding area. Or, if you're me, you just throw it all in there and hope for the best.

I do believe those are actual sunbeams coming through the tree branches in this picture of my overstuffed compost bin.And yes, I do just store the pitch fork in there like that.

But sometimes the pile needs a little help and that's the case with mine right now. It's chock-a-block with leaves from both fall and cleaning out the beds in spring. And while those leaves will break down at some point, I need some compost and the sooner the better, so I gotta get that baby cookin'.
The solution: Alfalfa. A 50-pound bag of of alfalfa cubes can be picked up at the feed store for about $10 and while I think it is a little ridiculous to pay for composting materials, it's the price I pay for being a lazy composter and that bag will probably last me at least two years. Alfalfa is a really good green because it is especially high in nitrogen.

Mmmmmmmmm, alfalfa slushy (say this in your best Homer Simpson voice).

So I stick a few handfuls of alfalfa cubes in a five-gallon bucket then fill it up about three-quarters of the way (just so that I can haul it without spilling the resulting slurry all over my pants) and let it "brew" for 45 minutes or until all the cubes are broken down and the whole thing is like a big ol' stinky slushy that some horse would love to have.

I use the handle of the pitchfork to make several holes in the pile, top, then fill them up with the alfalfa slushy before tossing the whole pile to aerate it.

And instead of layering this into my compost bin (which would necessitate removing a lot of the material in there) I just use the handle of the pitchfork to poke several holes all over and as deep as I can go and pour the alfalfa slushy in there. Then I toss the whole thing like a giant dead leaf and alfalfa slushy salad (aren't you hungry now?) to mix it all up and properly aerate the pile.
I'll bet within the week I have a nice steaming pile. Compost pile that is.

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A compost bin redo

Some of you might remember last year when I was lusting after this compost bin from Lee Valley Tools. After living with a dilapidated compost bin (made in about 25 minutes several years ago with four pallets and a set of hinges) for about a year, what finally made me spring for the new system was our furnace.

Confused? 

Well, turns out we needed a new furnace last fall, and since we were still in shock over how expensive propane was the winter before, we decided to connect to the natural gas line in the road. Then, in late winter, with the house plenty cozy with natural gas heat, we had the propane company come out and move the hideously ugly propane tank. A few years ago I had put up a reed fence to screen the propane tank and the compost bin, which I purposely set up behind the fence.

But with the propane tank gone, there was no more need for the fence, so I happily took it down. Then I looked out of the back door/kitchen door and saw this:

 And if I thought that was bad, what do you think my neighbor (right there in the background) thought? The pallet compost bin served us well for the cost of two hinges and a couple screws, but it was time for a new bin and a new location for the compost.

I moved the location of the bin over to the other side of the property, close to the vegetable garden and picked up those great bin brackets from Lee Valley. You buy just the corner pieces and have to supply your own wood so I went off to Home Depot and got some boards. It was my first time in the wood department and certainly my first time having someone cut boards for me. Although the corner brackets suggest you make a bin that is a maximum of 4 feet square, I decided to stretch that to 5 feet square. I had 10 10-foot pine boards (they won't last as long as cedar but they were half the price) cut in half, then screwed all the boards into the brackets with the supplied screws. I left the top two boards on one side unattached so I can remove them for easier access to the bin.

And isn't this better looking?

Best of all, we can't see it from the house, and neither can any of my neighbors (although compared to that other bin, it's so good looking it wouldn't be bad to look at).

I want this

The compost bin we threw together two years ago in about 15 minutes and four pallets has disintegrated. It didn't help that we stirred the compost pile with the Kubota. That's the bad news. The good news is that I REALLY want this: Lee Valley Tools Compost brackets.


I first saw this on Gardening by the Yard with Paul James (one of the last two decent gardening shows left on HGTV). Here's the problem. Just the brackets alone cost $79. That seems excessive for something that's going to hold decomposing stuff. That doesn't include the boards, which they recommend be cedar or redwood so they won't rot.

So, has anybody used this set-up? Do you love it, or are you wish you had just skipped the expensive brackets and thrown something together for a lot less money?