when i get in a pissy mood about this parks guy (specially if i see his car parked in the lot next to my wall) i start shredding leaves. the whole place gets so full of leaf dust that the cars in the park parking lot get all dirty. did it during a wedding a few weeks ago.
hey.... they say i have to get the debris cleared up. that means i have to shred all the leaves in the back yard & chip all the branches that i was going to make bean/pea poles out of!!!
i'd rather be doing other things, but NOOOOOO i have to get the dribirs cleared up!!!
my "pile" of shreaded/chipped stuff covers an area about 40 x 60 (sheet composting) & i have lots to go thru yet.

Is that gas shredder available through the online catalogue or at stores? I'd appreciate any and all info on a good way to reduce all this stuff plus any experience with shredding/chewing up those "Hideous evergreen blackberries" that will eat houses and cars if we don't use a machete. I need all the compost I can get. We have clay soil here that is like glue when it is wet and concrete when it is dry.

We have a Sears Craftsman 8HP chipper/shredder. What we do is use a 3 man operation, and no bag. We set it up at the bottom of the hill and rake down hill to the shredder. Once we get a substantial amount there (waist high or more) we crank it up and one person constantly sprinkles leaves into the hopper. We found that if you throw big bunches into it, that they don't make it all the way down to the blades and start backing up. But if you sprinkle them in, it really works well. When I say sprinkle, I don't mean one or two at a time, just not by the bunch.

The chipper part is relatively worthless unless you have really straight limbs. The top of the chipper hopper must be 8"x8" but the bottom is only like 3x3. And you have to hit that hole just right or else. And don't try sending bamboo through it. :-)

We don't use the bagger because it would fill up every 10 minutes. So we aim it off into a weedy patch and let the bits fly where they want. It piles up after a while. And there's a good bit of down force in the output and will wear a hole in the grass if you have grass there. If you lift the guard that aims it down (into the bag) then you can probably shoot leaves 50 feet or more.

I'm working on another project. I bought an old horse trailer, and a new 8HP vacuum to attach to it so I can ride around and collect leaves that others have raked up. I have to get the vacuum mounted and I'll almost be ready to go. Unfortunately, it's been wet around here and I've been slow to put this thing together. But there are still a bunch of leaves out there to grab yet this year. I can get about 187 bushels at a time, but I doubt that I'll ever get that many at once. I'm taking a couple of days off after Thanksgiving in hopes of running leaves. Should be fun!

I recently purchased and returned a McCulloch electric chipper/shredder (this model was recently reviewed in OG). It works well chipping small branches, etc. -- and probably would be great for the larger debris you mention -- but shredding is an EXCRUCIATINGLY slow process. Leaves must be pushed through a miniscule opening (no doubt a safety feature), so you can only add a small handful at a time. It clogs easily the machine must be essentially dismantled to unclog. It took me more than an hour to shred a small amount of leaves in a 1x15' spac!!!. I can't tell you how disappointed I was -- I thought I had found a great alternative to the whining, 2 cycle blowers/shredders with a little more kick than the string shredders -- and was swayed by the OG recommendation. While the OG reviewed mentioned shredding as "tedious," this doesn't even begin to describe the snail's pace of shredding with this machine. With a 1.5 acre wooded lot, I'd be out there 'til next fall using this machine!! I'm going to look into the string trimmer (Sears or Leaftron(sp?) as it appears be at least nominally faster (and much cheaper).

oh, i guess i should mention that the caretaker who lives in said park thinks i should fire up my chipper more often. he tells the people the story of what is happening to me & that i'm under a city mandate to get my yard done no matter the cost. he then refers them to the parks dept to ask for a refund on the rental of the park.
he hopes that if htere are enough complaints from park users that the guy who is after me will be dealt w/. this same thing has happened to otehrs & none of the little people" in parks likes it at all.

Hey ChrisB--I went to your website!! How awesome!! I especially loved your Mondo Composto. I'm sooooooo jealous

Can't wait to see your horse trailer/leaf vacuum. And your Raiso Plottos.

Don't be surprised if I e-mail you with a computer question someday. Just kidding, but sometimes I sure could use some help--Whadda ya mean Excel has to shut down and you're sorry for the inconvenience???? Don't you know I have six big files open and haven't saved for an hour? X-(