Drowning in yard waste- how to dispose?

[MossRoad]

 

[CalG]

Oh Yea! One tool away from happiness!

I NEED one of those on the walk behind!

 

[MossRoad]

Some years, like last year, all my leaves dropped in a week and I only picked them up once, and they were dry. Fantastic. However, most years, they take their time, it rains, and then it's a pain. In those years, I've put my snowplow with gauge wheels on my FEL and pushed the leaves off the yard into the woods. It works great.

I've seen those leaf plows at several college campuses around here. They have crews that blow the leaves into windrows, and the leaf plow pushes the windrow to the roads and sidewalks where the vacuum trucks can suck them up.

They work really well.

 

[ericm979]

The shredder on my MacKissic TH186 shreds leaves ok but like someone pointed out you have to feed a handfull at a time. And the shreddings dump out the bottom so you have to shovel them up every so often or move the chipper. That is ok for a couple large tree's worth of leaves for garden mulch but it's not going to cut it for a lot of trees. Oak leaves can have a lot of tannin in them which can discourage growth. I think black oak may not be so bad but I'm not sure. I'd want to research that before planning on using composted leaves in the garden.

I think piling them in the dump truck and dumping them somewhere on your land is the best solution. That's what I do with plant matter I can't get rid of some other way.

 

[ponytug]

Yes, oak leaves are rich in tannins. That's why oak bark, and leaves, were used to tan leather, but they still compost. However, to compost, you need air, water, sources of carbon (e.g. leaves), and, ideally, nitrogen. The higher the carbon to nitrogen ratio is, the longer it will take to decay into compost. You have to feed the fungi that will convert the leaves (carbon). Rain by virtue of falling through the air does absorb some nitrogen (ammonia and nitrogen oxides) from the air and will contribute a little. Mixing in something like urea or chicken manure will really accelerate the decomposition.

The other trouble with oak leaves is that they are really flat, so they pack down, which shuts off the air supply, slowing the composting process. Turning the compost helps aerate things, makes new air tunnels, and helps redistribute nutrients.

I hope that this helps.

All the best,

Peter

 

[California]

I just had a tree crew in here headed by a real pro arborist. We took out one redwood that was growing up to foul the windmill tail, then trimmed others to get sunlight into a cabin.

He dumped the chipper's shredded material for me and said this material is great for weed prevention around new orchard trees, but don't put it anywhere that it will get disced into the soil because the slow decomposition will rob nitrogen in the soil that the orchard trees need.

As for the foot or so of slowly decaying material on the ground that the redwoods dropped over many years, he said this is a fire hazard (NorCal here) so go over it with the rotary mower to pulverize it. This will make the fluffy stuff lay down, where occasional watering will make it less flammable and it will eventually compost it into the soil.

As for a garden shredder, I have a 6 hp one from HF. As noted above it will pull in and grind long woody material but it just clogs, trying to feed leaves. And it's a lot of work to feed it.

Photo from a decade ago shredding long slender branches. This week we trimmed everything up to 10 ft high from the now-larger redwood on the left, to get some sunlight into the shaded cabin and reduce fire hazard. The HF shredder would be useless for this week's project.

---
Added, 3 hour later:
Per the arborists advice today I shredded years of duff under the redwoods using the rotary mower. This reduced its volume down to less than 1/4 of what was there, now it looks like a thin layer of mulch and twigs. I had to be careful to not mow the underlying dirt (with fine redwood roots). The mower easily scalped uneven spots. I think a rotary mower might be the solution for the OP to dig down through the layers of leaves and pre-mulch, at least for making fire clearance around buildings. And if that material has to be removed this would make a major reduction in volume.

 

[plowhog]

Do the TD9 and dump trucks in your sig run ... You should have already buried it before now to improve soil.

Everything runs, although the TD9 right now has one steering clutch that is frozen up. (Working on that.)

I'd probably use the F800 dump for this debris since the volume would pretty quickly overwhelm the smaller dump body. Plus, when I dump I'd like fewer very large piles instead of a bunch of smaller ones.

 

[plowhog]

Oh Yea! One tool away from happiness!

I can't tell you how much I have laughed at your post-- thanks for writing it!

I suspect I have a lot of company-- believing if I just had ONE MORE piece of equipment all would be well.

 

[plowhog]

you live somewhere that you cant burn anything at all and you have 100 acres of land? What if lightning struck and caught it on fire? What you have there is a forest fire hazard.

That is exactly correct. The place is called California. Open burning was suspended months ago due to risk of wildfire.

I had 29 large trees come down last winter. Each tree generated a huge amount of slash. I did extensive burning (before the ban) to get rid of a massive amount of downed slash. Only now am I getting to the smaller stuff.

 

[plowhog]

Moss, that leaf pusher looks great for a smooth surface such as a lawn.

If you watch the video and think ... times fifty ... that is kind of like my fall cleanup.