The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Gardens => Topic started by: Fleecewife on February 22, 2018, 04:20:03 pm
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Does anyone use a chipper for wood trimmings? We are doing our winter hedging at the moment and it seems such a shame to just burn the trimmings. We have a huge amount, so I was wondering how effective the chips are as mulch, paths and so on. Is it worth the effort, or should we just carry on polluting the atmosphere with a fire?
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I do but it can be relatively time consuming:-
https://notesfromasuffolksmallhoding.blogspot.co.uk/ (https://notesfromasuffolksmallhoding.blogspot.co.uk/)
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We have a shredder and a chipper, run it thru the chipper twice.
Very satisfying to have that big pile of twiggy stuff into a nice neat little pile.
Never used it on paths, keep meaning to, mainly seems to go straight round shrubs or into compost bin with some manure, (that's usually the leylandii). Rots down lovely.
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Most of our hedge trimmings are hawthorn which is of course thorny. Does it create any problems going through the shredder or in use by sheep or poultry?
I can't find any chippers for hire near here, and new prices, even second hand prices, are astronomical. We did once buy a chipper from Lanark mart for not a lot, but it fell to bits quite soon ::)
Any suggestions of a model which would do the work but not cost the earth?
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I recently bought at a discount:-
MOUNTFIELD MCS2200 Garden Shredder
Price: £109.98
and find it fine for hedge trimmings, mainly blackthorn and hawthorn which do not present any problems.
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Thank you PK, but it would be too small for our needs. We have a good km of hedging, which is tall and has some branches too thick for your machine. I think there will be at least 7 or 8 sheep trailers full, before we start on pruning the trees.
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Wow thats a lot of hedging FW, 'fraid you are goibg to have to find something bigger than a garden machine.
Would it be worth approaching your local council and finding out if they use a contractor, if you have everything just ready it may not cost much?
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I could hire a nice big towable one for £100 a day, if I don't mind going to Pitlochry for it. Trouble is it would take all day to get there and back ;D . I'll keep searching for one more local. Siromer make chippers for our wee tractor, but I expect they would be expensive - I'll investigate further.
Thank you for all the suggestions and help :)
modified to say: I looked up a Siromer chipper - £1700 ish :roflanim:
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A great-nephew uses our garden shredder to chop up apples to make cider!
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I was looking the other day, thought £250 would buy something robust... I was wrong!
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Hi FW,
Is there no HSS hire centre close by? If not there is a place in Livingston AKRO multi hire that does towable shedders. I've never used one of them from him but I have used them for other stuff and they're normally pretty good. It's still not on your door step but should be a lot closer than Pitlochry!
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A great-nephew uses our garden shredder to chop up apples to make cider!
Me too- works really well
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Hi FW,
Is there no HSS hire centre close by? If not there is a place in Livingston AKRO multi hire that does towable shedders. I've never used one of them from him but I have used them for other stuff and they're normally pretty good. It's still not on your door step but should be a lot closer than Pitlochry!
YES :yippee: Thank you so much Cuddles. That place didn't come up when I googled, but indeed they do have the same towable chipper as the place at Pitlochry, for the same hire rate. Brilliant. Livingston is only about 20 miles away so perfect. Now to persuade Mr F :thinking:
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Glad I could help.
I would have thought the chipper would be a new big boys toy to play with for the day... can't see that needing much arm twisting :roflanim:
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I think it's me likes the big girls toys ;D Mr F always gets the job of repairs, which is not so much fun. The advantage of hiring - if it breaks, they mend it :D
Still, there's a few more days of hedgework to do before the pile would be big enough to chip, so I'll work on him til then.
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When i first moved here i bought a so-called small professional chipper (off hand I can't remember the brand and it's cold in the barn right now). It cost around £2K at the time. Bloody near useless. Yeah, it can chip a 3" branch if you shove it in the side access. Yes it has a huge top hopper.. but stick a decent load in there and the darned thing jams or stalls. Worst is that it can process quite quickly once you get the hang and the rhythm of it but the ejection duct is at the bottom, near the ground so you have to keep stopping to kick the chippings clear or pull the whole thing forwards.
I do use it for the garden 3acre prunings etc but hedge cutting stuff usually gets piled into a field and torched 'cos the processing time would be silly.
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<< but hedge cutting stuff usually gets piled into a field and torched 'cos the processing time would be silly. >>
Ah that's interesting pkevet. I had the idea to speed things up, as well as not to waste the small stuff by burning, so if it's more of a faff to chip than to burn, then we'll carry on burning. Anything of a handleable size gets turned into kindling, big stuff into firewood. The brashy stuff looks such a huge volume just to burn, but I suppose it's mostly space. Mr F says we would use more fuel fetching, using and returning the chipper than we would save from burning the wood and releasing carbon into the atmosphere that way. Some wood prunings we leave in piles in woodland for wildlife to use as it slowly decomposes, but not thorny stuff like hawthorn. A problem we had a couple of years ago when it was too wet to burn off the brashings immediately, was that a colony of sparrows moved in and built several nests in the pile, so it then had to wait until autumn ::)
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I'd guess I've got some 2-2.5miles of hedge sides that need to be kept under a measure of control - which means sections get attacked each year but it's a few years getting round it all. I did about 1/2 mile+ last year using loppers mostly + some chainsaw and was pulling out 2-3m lengths of hazel, willow etc and ripping out stuff that had invaded through the fence or hung low over it to hit tractor cab top. It was a lot of wagon-loads. Chipping it with my chipper would have been several days work and not much of it was thick enough to bother using as firewood (I have plenty of that from fallen trees and my woodland). I did feel gulty 'cos when the power company did the length of hedge under their wires -5yrs ago?- with a serious chipper i got a good 3 wagon-loads of lovely leaf and woodchip from that 150m hedge that probably would have filled 10 builder bags. I swapped a wagonload of mulch with a neighbour for rotted horse dung- a win for both of us. But age is taking the toll on how much i want to faff about. Hire charges on a big chipper or paying a contractor to brush the hedges is ££. Some areas get a bit hilly and boggy for a big tractor by the fence so dragging it to the wagon is preferable.
Then as you say it's fuel to run the chipper and drag it around + delivery/fetching costs and hire.
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Reading this thread, I now feel less guilty for clearing my brashy bits with bonfires.
We are clearing around 15-20 years of hedge neglect and have miles to do, so I was thinking of a chipper as a 'better' solution, but it sounds like it probably isn't the easy-fix answer that I thought it initially appeared to be.
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Hi Maysie
Are you laying your hedge? It would be perfect for it after that length of time. If you haven't thought of it, there are hedgelaying tutors wanting unlaid hedge to teach with :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree:
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Hi Maysie
Are you laying your hedge? It would be perfect for it after that length of time. If you haven't thought of it, there are hedgelaying tutors wanting unlaid hedge to teach with :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree: :tree:
Have been on the course (Midlands Style), bought the billhook (etc) and am now getting on with the hedge laying while things are still dormant (just).
Was delighted to see that a lot of our hedges are Hazel, so we have plenty of our own stakes and binders!
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Sounds like you're well prepared :D Watch out for hedgelayer's elbow (RSI). And don't worry about mistakes because it soon all grows back and hides the windy gaps :D . Some before and after pics would be good to see.
We're still trying to get the final stretch of hedge done with the wee tractor and cutter bar, but today it got stuck in a snow drift and took an hour to dig out. Meanwhile the birds are starting to flirt so nesting won't be far behind.
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The weather has set me back the last few weekends, so I know I am now cutting it a bit fine this year now, as I dont want to affect the birds nesting.
Shame though, as I was keen to 'hone my new-found skills'.
I am sure there will be some 'before and after' photos taken. Whether I share them or not, will be a decided when I stand back and take a look at the finished job! ;)
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Watch out for hedgelayer's elbow (RSI).
oh yes .. do watch for this - I had it last winter, took months to heal.