Wow! I cant imagine having chocolate and vanilla growing in your back yard. (And turmeric & ginger too). Better than a grocery store. I just read that chocolate is a great brain food--as are most saturated fats. Another brain enhancing food is coconut oil.

Such good exotic eats, yum!

I am late to this discussion, but I wanted to add to the shredder conversation. We have used an old heavy lawn mower for our shredding needs for years. Hedge and brush trimmings get chopped up and make a good mulch. I have ivy hedges, butterfly bushes and bamboo and fruit tree trimmings we lightly pile and running over with the bagged mower. Since our city lot isn't large enough to accommodate piles of brush this method mulches better and faster than my cheap shredder did. The stuff is chopped fine enough the ivy never roots and it composts where ever I spread it in the yard fairly fast. The bagged material gets easily moved to where it is most needed. Just wear heavy pants incase of flying stick pieces. This probably wouldn't work for everyone but has certainly been wonderful for my garden/yard.

Great idea Jewell. I have been using an old scythe, but I can see the mower would be able to handle a lot more material in less time!

I envy your lawn mower and the space to use it, Jewel. doubt if there is a maintenance chore I hate more than the task of shredding leaves.

After I've gone out and collected lots of bags of leaves I brought them home to shred. I fill an old plastic garbage can about one-third full and use a weed eater to shred the leaves. It's a long slow process. The good news is that it is worth it. Those leaves have truly improved my soil.

Lyn

RoseBlush1 said:I envy your lawn mower and the space to use it, Jewel. doubt if there is a maintenance chore I hate more than the task of shredding leaves.

After I've gone out and collected lots of bags of leaves I brought them home to shred. I fill an old plastic garbage can about one-third full and use a weed eater to shred the leaves. It's a long slow process. The good news is that it is worth it. Those leaves have truly improved my soil.

Lyn

Lyn, you are more energetic than me. I am so lazy I never thought of shredding leaves I just rake them onto the beds. You are right leaves make excellent mulch and always have the highest concentration of worms. I have never been able to get enough leaves.

Jewell ....

It only took one wind storm which put all of the leaves I had carefully put down in the beds to blow them onto my back patio to convince me it was worth the extra effort to shred them so that they stay put.

I can have as many leaves as I am willing to haul home, but hauling does get old. Last year, during the third year of our drought, it was a waste of leaves to use them as mulch because the high temps of summer just fried them almost as soon as I put them down. I had very little worm activity last summer. In order to retain moisture in the soil, I went to the utility company's chipping pile and used wood chips for mulch. The heavier material did make a difference in holding moisture.

I talked with a geologist friend last summer about the worms and he told me that no matter what I used for mulch during a severe drought there would be less worm activity. I thought that was kind of interesting.

We got sufficient rain this season to get the soil deep down moist again and I have lots and lots of worms.

Smiles,
Lyn

While DH frowns at my collection of trash bags full of leaves that sit over the winter, it's easiest for me to collect shredded leaves in the fall. DH uses a bag in the fall while he's mowing instead of the mulching setting. Of course, I am blessed with trees in my yard. If one had the space to store the bags over winter, would that be more feasible?

I used to store them along the far side of the house ... in bags, but I finally organized the carport so that I can store them there. I do have a garage and only one car. I cannot figure out why I made the carport as a catch all instead of creating a good work area for all things gardening.

Smiles,
Lyn

RoseBlush1 said:Jewell ....

It only took one wind storm which put all of the leaves I had carefully put down in the beds to blow them onto my back patio to convince me it was worth the extra effort to shred them so that they stay put.

I can have as many leaves as I am willing to haul home, but hauling does get old. Last year, during the third year of our drought, it was a waste of leaves to use them as mulch because the high temps of summer just fried them almost as soon as I put them down. I had very little worm activity last summer. In order to retain moisture in the soil, I went to the utility company's chipping pile and used wood chips for mulch. The heavier material did make a difference in holding moisture.

I talked with a geologist friend last summer about the worms and he told me that no matter what I used for mulch during a severe drought there would be less worm activity. I thought that was kind of interesting.

We got sufficient rain this season to get the soil deep down moist again and I have lots and lots of worms.

Smiles,
Lyn

I notice that the worms appear to go into hibernation when the soil drys. I only water small portions of my veggie garden and have planted drought tolerant and natives in the front yard. Of course our drought looks a lot different than yours as well as our natives.

I often look longingly at fallen leaves every autumn, but our neighborhood has primarily fir trees. With our filbert trees gone so is my major source of leaves. The little orchard area gets to keep its leaves and the mess is out of sight so no extra work. Guess I am a pretty lazy gardener

Not lazy. And I guess I'm spoiled with all of the fall leaves here. I was just wondering if taking advantage of all of those lawn and leaf bags sitting curbside in the fall would maybe result in leaves already shredded by lawnmowers during fall cleanup.

No, I don't think you are lazy, Jewell. When I started my garden, I had to find a source of leaves because my soil was totally dead. Since I live in the midst of a forest, it was a matter of finding someone who had a lot of oaks on their property and going out and bagging the leaves because I knew I was gathering OM from healthy trees. I wanted to be careful about what pathogens I might bring back.

Cindy, no curbs up here ... lol. I've avoided the green waste compost that I can get free from the dump because I don't know what people have put on the stuff they bring to the dump. A lot of people use brush killer to kill the brush on their properties for fire safety. I think I'd feel the same way about gleaning leaves from curbs, but I really don't have to think that one through ..

Smiles,
Lyn

I have to agree with you, Lyn, on yard waste compost. Too much weed and feed fertilizers or Roundup to make me feel comfortable with it. It is frustrating.

Cindy ....

If you have city parks, often you can get OM from them that is uncontaminated. In some cities, they are not allowed to spray plants for disease or insects because so many people have allergic reactions and that can be a huge liability to the city. It's worth checking out.

Smiles,
Lyn

I'm good with OM - have tons in my own yard. Was just trying to thing of alternatives for other folks.
I did practice more chop and drop yesterday but, in all honestly, mainly brown stuff this early in the season. Hard to get the hang of it when I'm normally picking up every single fall leaf from 6 months ago. Do need to go back and do a little more grooming and corralling of thuggish plants but a 1-week cleanup took 1 day. In this wilder garden, I'm hoping the fall leaves will also cut down on some of the weeds.

Late May/early June is when I really tidy up after all of the spring bloomers in my mixed gardening beds. It's been great to practice a modified chop and drop. With bulb foliage either yellowing or falling over while still green, I chop it all down and then lay the shredded leaves over it. Any egg shells and coffee grounds go down in "needy" areas before the final layer of leaves. I did a hard pruning on some forsythia - taking out more than I left - and left some of the smaller branches on the ground. Hoping none of those cut branches will root as I don't need more forsythia. More shrubs to prune now that the spring bloom is done so looking forward to more chop and drop.

I just saw a short piece on "Gardening Australia" yesterday that mentioned that one shouldn't drop around the same plant that was chopped due to possibly transferring diseases specific to that plant and that it was best to drop around a plant from a different family. Has anyone noticed if this might be the case?

Cindy ...

This has been a common practice for me with rose prunings and/or leaf litter under a rose. I usually move it to another type of plant because the second plant is not susceptible to the same diseases as the roses.

For example, studies have shown black spot spores over winter in the leaf litter under a rose. If you move that leaf litter to a non-rose bed and put clean mulch under the rose, it protects the rose from being infected by those spores and the non-rose plant is not susceptible to rose black spot spores.

Smiles,
Lyn

btw ... I don't use the thorny canes I cut off of some roses for mulching purposes. They bite ...

Yeah. Those rose thorns come right through my 'gators'! Ow.

Thanks for the feedback! Being new to chop and drop, it never occurred to me that I might be transferring or promoting diseases. I only have a few roses but guess where the trimmings went when I deadheaded them? I'll retrieve them and put them elsewhere. I usually don't have many plant diseases here - just pests - but it never hurts to be mindful of what I'm doing.