Garden shredder for thinner cuttings

Have you not got a 'Brown bin' my area collects garden waste..?

If you just give it a few days, and keep it dry, it will compact down itself. We almost always fill out brown bin, which is emotied fortnightly, but if cut a few days before collection, it will have compacted well down, before it is collected.

I've had experience with this one:

It was fine, a little bit of clogging (it was raining and everything was sodden) but not too bad. It breaks things into ~2" chunks which is fine for the green waste but not ideal for mulching. It was a mix of woody branches, leaves, stringy brambles... The branches were easier to shred than brambles but it did those fine.

If you're interested, have a look on ebay or FB locally as they're often available used for a fraction of the new price. Look for ones of the same shape irrespective of the brand.

Theo

Have a look at

Assuming you are not hacking off 1/2inch diameter privet branches, if you have a electric/petrol lawn mower use that to shred the cuttings. A shallow pile on the lawn and just run the lawn mower over them. Any bits that spread out just rake them up into a small pile and repeat.

If had two shredders in my lifetime but no longer have one. One was a spinning blade type and the other a spiral screw type. IMO they were more trouble than they were worth and neither worked that well on freshly cut privet or anything else that had been freshly cut and was soft. Both types worked on more woody dry material but I do recall spending far too much time freeing up jams etc.

Yup, I found similar... I had a high speed rotary impact type - ok on leafy stuff, but limited capacity, slow and a PITA to feed. It could also in theory take a "branch" if it was really straight and had no side shoots, where it would chip it very slowly. Probably handy if you find yourself needing to dispose of a set of broom handles!

Then I had a bigger Bosch spiral "quiet" shredder - better on woody / dry stuff, but clogged way to easy on leafy green stuff. ok if you cut and left it for a few days before sheading. It was somewhat self feeding

- but still you needed to get stuff through a narrow slot and could not take a branch more than about an inch. Also quite pricey to replace the cutting helix when it gets blunt. At first I kind of liked it, but with time got ever more frustrated with it.

Mostly what I need to dispose of these days are tree prunings and stout hedge prunings. In the end I bit the bullet and got a "semi pro" petrol chipper - 9hp / 270cc engine on it. It has a 12" square funnel on the input end of it to lob a branch in, and that dumps it down onto a large heavy rotating drum that has couple of very heavy blades on it. That has proved to be fantastic for disposing of branches. Stick the thick end of the branch in it (up to about 3" diameter[1]), and it spits it out a coarse wood chip mulch out of the top chute. Small amounts I can have it fire straight into the green bin. Large amounts into a trailer, or quite often - just back into the treeline as ground cover to keep the weeds and saplings down. I can clear a 20' x 20' pile that is stacked 10' high in an hour or so

This is my preferred method too. I also make a first pass with the mower to pick up beside the hedge, with a hi lift blade it saves a lot of raking. I even run it along the foot way when I cut the hedge for my neighbour and often just have to blow a few bits into the hedge bottom after. I have never tried it with an electric mower, just petrol ones.