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Morning Light: The Fetchland Gardening Wire

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Eynsham Red Nov 2021 2:40pm, 14 Nov 2021 8,184 posts	Quote Pin Eynsham Red I’m not a big fan of leaf blowers etc, but! We have LOTS of large leaves which accumulate outside the front of our house from the trees in our road. I mean piles of them! We’ve tried collecting them in the past and bagging them for leaf mould, but even after a couple of years they don’t break down because they are so large. I googled leaf shredders thinking that there might some small hand operated device but the best I could find is a cheap “electric blower/vacuum/shredder”. We don’t have much room in our garden for a netted leaf pile, so I think that chopping and bagging is our best solution. Any ideas what I could use other than this?
Cheeky’s Dad Nov 2021 2:47pm, 14 Nov 2021 1,659 posts	Quote Pin Cheeky’s Dad The advice I’ve heard for chopping leaves is to collect them up using the mower or if they are in the street you could roughly spread them on the lawn and mow. A bit of grass in with them helps the process. If they are dry give each bag a water before you tie them up and make sure your bags have a few holes in. Most leaves shouldn’t take more than 12 months done this way.
jacdaw Nov 2021 2:58pm, 14 Nov 2021 3,496 posts	Quote Pin jacdaw What kind of trees are they?
jacdaw Nov 2021 3:04pm, 14 Nov 2021 3,497 posts	Quote Pin jacdaw If it's just for leaves, a cheap (£75ish) garden shredder would work on most leaves. The sort that disintegrates at the sight of a stick. Mine just rot down. I mulch the vegetable beds with them about now, and they disappear by spring. Mostly ash, hornbeam, some birch, sycamore and climbing hydrangea.
Angus Clydesdale Nov 2021 3:07pm, 14 Nov 2021 23,525 posts	Quote Pin Angus Clydesdale We usually mow them up and put them into the compost heap.
Rosehip Nov 2021 3:28pm, 14 Nov 2021 23,049 posts	Quote Pin Rosehip Spread on the lawn before mowing is a job for me this week, the ones that form a foot deep pile by the kitchen door will get mixed into the compost
sallykate Nov 2021 4:54pm, 14 Nov 2021 8,439 posts	Quote Pin sallykate Eynsham Red are they plane leaves by any chance? They're terrible at breaking down. Most other leaves will turn into useable leaf mould in a year if put into a bag with a sprinkling of water and some holes in the bag. We have planes next door and in the street which dump their leaves on to our front garden. I tried making them into leaf mould one year but they remained stubbornly whole. I used them as mulch anyway, round the base of some shrubs. OH hates them and one year raked as many as possible on to the pavement, where they were dealt with by the street sweeper. Putting them on to the grass and mowing them is a good idea. I tend to leave the ones on the flower beds. On the one hand they provide an unwelcome shelter for snails; on the other I think they're good for other, more helpful, creatures.
Eynsham Red Nov 2021 5:10pm, 14 Nov 2021 8,185 posts	Quote Pin Eynsham Red Thanks for your suggestions. I think that they are sycamore leaves I like the idea of putting them on the lawn and mowing them but that comes with it’s own headaches. We live in a terraced house and so will have to bring gallons of leaves through, and our patch of lawn lawn is less than 10ft by 6ft so I can see my hover mower probably blowing them all around the back garden before they get shredded 😀. I was hoping that someone might had come across something like a glorified hand mixer. I might have to invent one 🤔
sallykate Nov 2021 5:28pm, 14 Nov 2021 8,440 posts	Quote Pin sallykate Sycamore would apparently also benefit from shredding before being left to make mould. If they’re dry, could you bag them and then squash to crumble them up a bit, before adding moisture to encourage them to break down?
Hanneke Nov 2021 5:59pm, 14 Nov 2021 82,094 posts	Quote Pin Hanneke My client investec in a Stihl leaf vacuum... It hoovers leaves and shreds them. It makes super leafmould. He dumps it in two old wheely bins and I use it the next year on the fruit bushes.