?? "Off-label Appliance Use in Your Garden?

[<balvenieman]

I use a thrift-store blade type coffee grinder to reduce alfalfa pellets to meal. When I find one comparably priced, I'll probably adopt a human-powered coffee or grain mill for the task. In the garden today, while cutting up "greens" trimmings with a pocket knife, it occurred to me that a thrift-store food processor might serve to more quickly homogenize tender garden trimmings. It's an idea on which I intend to follow up, unless someone here has had a negative experience doing so. If I were to buy a major (to me) power gardening tool, it would be one of those debris shredder jobbies but that's 'way overkill for most of my composting needs. Does anyone have reliable gardening applications for other types of household appliances not meant for the garden?

[Charlie]

What a waste of time.

Buy alfalfa meal to start with.

Charlie

[phorbin]

A good, 6 horsepower, self-propelled lawnmower can shred a lot of debris and pick it up too.

[FarmI]

Yeah, a toilet brush is something I find very useful in the garden. The size of the head and the angle of the head means it gets used for all sorts of thinks.

[Pat Kiewicz]

People have been known to use a vacuum cleaner to suck up whiteflies, leafhoppers and such in the garden.

I think there have been attempts to marker commercial 'bug vacs' for field use in organic farming.

[<balvenieman]

Yes, but then someone here would have to mow! LOL! We don't do that much: As a rule, at least twice but sometimes as many as four times per year, depending on rainfall. I occasionally use a little walk-behind mower in the most-used pathways but for most of the season use a human-powered swinging thingie to knock off the seed tops and keep the grass to a non-tickling level. Many years ago, I converted one of those "Snapper" high-vacuum mowers into a stationary light-duty shredder/mulcher. It worked well but finally bit the dust?holes abraded through the alloy mower bed. If I were to replace it today, I'd just geek for a specialized tool. I don't usurp any of the native vegetative "waste" for the garden. Our preference here is to leave it in place, whenever practicable. A large part of the cumulus does get chopped up, whenever one of us mows, to speed de-constitution but large obstructive objects?yesterday's sand pine deadfall, for example?get moved to a less intrusive location. Intervention only hastens the inevitable desertification but sometimes seems necessary.

[phorbin]

I hear you. We don't mow much... and we have official permission from London Ontario to leave much of our lot to fend as naturally as anyghing in the city can fend. --Now that we owe the bank for it, we'll be turning much more of it over to food and selling off our extra seedlings as the spring comes on.

Our primary use for the mower is in the spring and fall. Norway maple leaves can be a pain in compost if you don't chop them up.

...And we have to keep the city's part of the hill mowed to keep the city from doing it wrong and a nearby neighbour from scalping it to nothing.

There is something to be said for leaving well enough alone.

What's happening there?

[<balvenieman]

Nothing beyond the normal pattern of deforestation and eventual paving.