Viewing post #680607 by dirtdorphins

RickCorey said:
Lately I've been throwing anything woody in a heap like your #2 and mumbling "hugelculture", with the plan of some day accumulating enough to be worth burying under a bed.

But now I'm thinking, after the wood softens a little, and after I sharpen my lawnmower blade, I might just chop up that woody heap with the lawn mower and add the shreds to my main pile. I did that with one batch of low-growing juniper bushes, but I did it on my driveway where the chips flew around everywhere. I couldn't get the chips small enough to compost quickly or small enough to add whole to soil after a brief composting. I think the mower blade was too dull, and the wood too green.

Some day!

Well I use my lawn mower for grass and leaves and *little* twigs, too--it is also noisy, but nowhere near as bad as the chipper.

Forgive me, I thought Rick was talking about wood and the image of him trying to mow-chop junipers in the driveway is comical. For wood--I'm talking tree limbs and branches and woody shrubs and large stalks and the like--I use the chipper, about once a year or whenever the pile gets in my way. And it really does ruin the peace but I get a nice batch of course chips and fine chips and no annoying pile of brush and the peace returns. We used to haul it all to the 'Green Waste' place and then return with a load of compost they made from previously dumped materials--that worked just fine too and I still pick up plenty of compost from them