Uses for a Wood Chipper

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miaag
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Uses for a Wood Chipper

Post by miaag »

Hello, my name's Milli. Me and my partner are very keen on making sure we do what we can to help the environment and reduce our carbon footprint. Fortunately, we own a nice sized garden with plenty of trees and its the place we love to spend our free-time, be it relaxing, gardening or entertaining guests. We've always preferred to be out in the garden rather than cooped-up indoors. We also have some chickens and rabbits along with our dogs and cats so a big garden was essential when we had to decide on where to live last time around.

I've been looking into ways we can recycle and also help to reduce our costs down. Managing a big garden and all our pets mean that there are always uses for wood chippings, wood shavings and wood mulch. A lot of our money is spent on buying these from the store rather than recycling our green waste. We regularly have to prune our trees and plants. We always have a lot of green waste at the end of each week so buying a wood chipper seems like it would make a lot of sense in the long-term.

Obviously, if it guzzles the petrol, then that wouldn't be great for the environment so I was wondering if anyone could suggest a good electric one that can also shave and mulch? Cost compared to benefit is something we clearly have to consider as we aren't a business but do have a lot of green waste.
miaag
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Re: Uses for a Wood Chipper

Post by miaag »

Also, i'd be keen to hear what ways people utilize wood chippers in their garden or any good alternative ways to re-purpose green waste. Thanks, Milli.
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KarenE
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Re: Uses for a Wood Chipper

Post by KarenE »

Hi

We've got a little bosch one like this:

http://www.garden4less.co.uk/bosch-shre ... Gwod-rQCbw

I don't know if it's this exact one. We bought it second hand off ebay a few years ago and it works fine, and was MUCH cheaper. It's good for making chippings for the chicken run, and for general compostable waste - I just chucked it on parts of the garden. It's also easier to transport to the tip if you can't find a use for it yourself, or stick it in the green bin for the council to turn into compost.

It only takes a certain width of branch though, and you do have to be careful as they can easily get stuck in it. But it's definitely worth having. Watch out with rose branches, the thorns can zing off. Don't want one of those in the eye!

We either burn our bigger branches in our incinerator, give away to neighbours or chop them and keep them for our chimenea. The chipper would also make good kindling.
Karen
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miaag
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Re: Uses for a Wood Chipper

Post by miaag »

Thanks Karen, appreciate the response. You've shown me few more uses that I hadn't even considered so that's great. We would definitely like to make our own compost as its meant to be really easy and its a great way of getting rid of house wastage too. We'll keep all our potato peels, egg shells and things like that to mix with the green garden waste. Should make some killer compost, no point giving it to the Council when you can make use of it yourself I suppose.

I've been looking around for the one you've mentioned as it sounds like it would be ideal. Yes its not heavy duty but we probably don't need or want anything too big. I've found the same one here http://www.for-sale.co.uk/wood-chipper at a for sale website for £172.00 with fee delivery to the UK so would be saving a little bit. I'm happy to spend around the £200 mark as long as its going to prove its worth, so I think i'll just go for this one. It's the cheapest price I've found for a brand new one of that model.

I'll double check with my other half when we're up later and probably just purchase it so thanks again for the recommendation.

Milli )like(
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Mo
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Re: Uses for a Wood Chipper

Post by Mo »

For prunings we found that you spent as much time cutting them to fit in (without jamming) as actually shredding.
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Richard
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Re: Uses for a Wood Chipper

Post by Richard »

Hello and welcome.#

I can't follow up with any further advice for you, but would say to be careful where you pile up the chippings - the people over the Lane had a large pile in their back garden close to a Shed and it self-combusted.

Chippings are great for the garden and wildlife, will attract lot's of Invertebrates for the birds.

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Freeranger
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Re: Uses for a Wood Chipper

Post by Freeranger »

Hi, and welcome to the lane )wav(
Composting is a great idea, as you can use it to improve the soil and grow fruit and veggies - no point paying someone else for those either! If you have a lot of garden waste then you need to hold some back, add everything in layers and turn it regularly. That way you get a good mix - it should get hot in the middle, like Richard says, but turning it should keep it manageable. Chickens just lurve the veggies, so you might need to net them. That's the veggies, though' the chickens will tempt you occasionally.
New ground can be broken by putting down a couple of layers of overlapping wetted (else it blows away) cardboard with chippings on top, so by the time it's all rotted down, your weeds are a bit more timid.
I can't think of anything else for the chippings, but you could use some of your prunings to make a bug house to encourage friendly insects to your garden.
Hopefully someone with more experience and a better imagination will be able to add more ideas.
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