Some years ago, we had a chipper/shredder that I think was made by Troy-Built. It did a great job, was manuverable, and it probably would have fit in the car trunk if we removed the handle. We had a 'smokin' compost pile!
cora

i have turned huge piles of limbs/leaves/weeds into mulch with... my mulching mower! distribute it evenly. grab a beer. work slowly... rock it back and forth.

and then sharpen your blade. but, make sure you haven't had too much beer!

Many people on the Compost Forum use their mower to chop up leaves .
I use leaves directly on flower and veggie beds without chopping them first .
Unchipped leaves plus greens compost very quickly in a compost pile . Once in a while a friend gives me her neighbor's grass clippings that for some unknown reason - this neighbor still bags . Those clippings plus leaves make a smokin' hot compost and rich soil .
Sticks , stems , branches and limbs seem to stay around forever and do not compost well . That's when I wish I had an industrial strength professional chipper like the one tree companies use . A bush hog would work too but would not make a pretty pile like a chipper .
Reusing all garden refuse is an outstanding idea no matter how you do it .

Michael,
what happens if you have too much beer?
What is too much beer?
Felix

LOL! What IS too much beer???!!!?!?
I've participated in many hours and years in scientific labs studying that phenomenon in Gainesville, only to arrive at the conclusion that such does not exist.

If you're operating a chipper/mulcher there may be such a thing as too much beer. Oops!
john

yeah... too much beer is when you have to go to the er. i was cleaning gutters this weekend and almost fell... guess the two buds with lunch was a dumb idea... but it was HOT.

Hi - late to this, I know - I have a small electric chipper/shredder I bought from Gardeners Supply that is perfect for the majority of yard waste I generate.

You might find a better price elsewhere - I paid less than they're asking now, but that was several years ago.

Here is a link that might be useful: Electric Shredder @ Gardeners.com

Hi Sumitha,

Dont know where you live but a Harbor Freight store in the Lake Worth area may have what you need for less than $200.

Sunitha, I too struggle with the amount of yard waste I send to the landfill despite a very good effort to compost most yard waste. With a lot of trees in my yard I have a lot of sticks that fall. I also have a lot of prunings. Many soft ones I can mow over and just recycle on the lawn, but ones that could hurt my little mulching mower or that are in too much quantity for the compost pile, I guiltily send to the landfill wishing I had a good way to use up the valuable organic material. In the past, I asked the same question on the soil and compost forum. Answers I got made it seem like unless one spends upwards of a thousand (unless you are lucky to find a used one), the chippers are not strong enough. Others would say they are noisy, difficult to store, easy to jamb, etc. I gave up, thinking it was impractical and not really green to use fuel to power a big monster, then emit the exhaust into the air.

Carol, you really have given me hope that your find is a good solution. Can you tell us more about it? Would it handle newly cut bush prunings? What about heliconia leaves? Sticks up to what size? How often does it get clogged up? Any other problems you've had? Sounds like you can give this guy a recommendation....and best of all, it is electric! Clean air.

Jay, do you have a specific product you've seen at Harbor Freight? Please tell.

Sunitha, in our area the live oak leaves are rather small, so I just mow over the ones that fall on the grass, and the ones that fall on the beds (by far the greatest proportion, I just leave there to compost in place. Same goes with pine needles. If your leaves are too large to mow into the lawn, can you just mow over them and bag them like Michael suggested? Even if you end up raking them, as Gatormom said, they really don't take long to compost, especially if you add grass clippings.

I echo the pat on the back for you. It's great that you're trying to find solutions to use the valuable nutrients in your yard waste and lessen the amount that goes to the landfill.

Anna

Hi - here's more info on my chipper/shredder - which is made by McCulloch:

It will take branches up to 1 1/2" dia. & chips stuff pretty small - makes a rather fine mulch that breaks down fast here in our climate - really enriches the soil. There're 2 stages; the top is for leaves & thin branch clippings, the bottom feed tube is for thicker branches.

Fresh clippings are no problem(in fact, that's what it handles best), but VERY fibrous &/or wet stuff like ginger stems, fresh banana leaves tend to clog it quckly.To unclog, you have to take off the cover to get @ the blades & that's a hassle, but it only takes a few minutes. I've learned to alternate dry w/ wet to keep clogging to a minimum.

Very dry wood can be hard on the hands - I bought heavy leather gloves after my hands were bruised the 1st time I used it.I also wear eye & ear protection.

It's not terribly fast, but I can make 1 or 2 wheelbarrows full of mulch in an afternoon.

I wish the exit chute on mine was higher - seems it was designed for mulching in place, so I use an old dishpan when I want to make mulch in 1 spot & use it elsewhere.(pic in my link below, looks like the stand is higher than mine)

& it's very heavy, but mobile - I'm not very big or strong & I can easily wheel it where needed.

I did have to buy a heavy duty power cord (14 amp), but haven't had to do any maintenance @ all since I bought it - love the electrics! = )

Here is a link that might be useful: more specs

Thanks so much for the info, Carol! I'm going to show my DH and keep my fingers crossed that he will approve. Thanks again!

Anna

Anyone have suggestions for palm fronds? I've been told the stems are too hard for most home shredder/mulchers but I hate to just send mine to a landfill.

I've got a couple areas of the yard where I stow stuff I've pruned, under a giant heliconia, behind and under a dense hedge, etc. This stuff takes awhile to break down, but I don't prune so often that it's a problem. It keeps stuff out of the landfill at least. I saw a post awhile back about how the best composting was the easy, in open air but out of view, piles of junk. Before I read that, I hadn't thought about just stuffing my prunings in corners, but it's worked great and actually kept down some weeds. Plus I figure there is wildlife that needs, at some point in its lifecycle, dead and decaying stuff. So I like to provide.

But that doesn't work for the palm fronds. They never, ever break down, as far as I can tell. Makes me think they'd be great mulch, if I had the right chipper.

As for beer, there is too much. That level was reached one beer before your wife became annoyed with you.

But wine? Never too much.
:)

Doesn't it seem counterproductive to compost if you have to buy power tools to do it? Besides, if there are no power tools involved, there's no such thing as too much beer.

Besides my compost bin, I have a brush pile for the larger things. It's between the shed and the fence so it isn't generally visible. It breaks down much slower but I know it's breaking down because I pile it up as high as my head and pretty soon, it's just waist high. (Or would that be waste high?)

Too bad you do not live near cow pastures .
My cows love to eat palm leaves , oak leaves and most of all - Tithonia .
They munch on roses - thorns and all .
They dine on the neighbor's low growing Junipers - very pokey .
They gobble up watermelon rinds , banana peels , apple cores , actually any fruit or vegetable . Onions and garlic are no-nos as are Lantana and anything from a Cherry tree but other than that -- they make really good mulchers . Goats are even better .
Got any livestock of any kind near you ?

Gatormom,

I'm within the city limits of Miami. If there's livestock nearby, it's not legal (though chickens are, quirk in the Miami city code.)

And I'm in a neighborhood of little urban lots. But even on our little quarter acre (if that) I find room to leave pruned limbs under bushes, so they can go back to their natural state _ dust to dust. They degrade pretty quickly. But those stalks from the palm fronds seem to last forever - the fronds themselves practically dissolve. Do your cows actually eat the stalks?

I only prune a cabbage palm frond when it's brown and ready to fall in the pool and at that point, its stalk is hard as a rock. I found one the other day under the palm and I didn't put it there, meaning it's been there for maybe four years. Still hard as a rock. (I was under there on hands and knees cutting virginia creeper vines down at the ground - anyone got ideas for killing them at the ground? I've been thinking of crawling back under there with vinegar or coffee. That &^!% virginia creeper really wants to take an oak and a cabbage palm, not to mention some crotons and a variety of other plants I kind of like. It's already working on a Royal Palm next door that when it dies will fall on my house, and cut it in half! So I'm open to ideas.)