Hi all,
What should I do with hedge/bush trimmings?
We had the most ridiculous winter that brought well over 6ft of snow. Suddenly it’s a lovely 10° / 15°C (in March??) so I’m racing to prune our fruit trees. I’m also cleaning up hedges and bushes that have been damaged by being buried. I’m not sure what I should do with the massive-and-growing collection of wood and trimmings.
In past years I’ve had bonfires with friends but I feel like I want to put all this to a better use. Is there a good way to compost wood?
I’m thinking of making some small fences with the longer pieces, but that won’t do much to the pile.
All ideas welcome!
by black2sugar
9 Comments
You’ll want to chip them for compost and mulching
You can absolutely pile them up and eventually they will break down and compost/turn into dirt. In the meantime they provide cover for birds and other small animals.
Will you have lots of trimmings every year? I’d buy a chipper. Otherwise burn ’em.
I wouldn’t leave piles to rot as it’s a fire hazard and rodents will live in there. We had fruit trees girdled when the chipper was at a friend’s for a few years….
If you don’t want to buy or rent a chipper, you can still break them down. It takes some elbow grease. Get good Fiskars long handled pruners and chop everything up into 3 inch pieces. These are small enough to lay on the ground and decompose. Costs almost nothing to make, except time and effort.
Give it goats.
Chip what you can, burn the rest. You can still use the ash productively. You can try to make biochar directly if you want as well.
If you don’t have a chipper, you can ask an arborist or landscaper if they would be willing to come chip on their way back from a job if you throw them a few bucks and offer to keep all the chips. Just make a nice easy pile right where their truck would be (mostly all of the labor is moving things to the truck).
1. Compost, or…. like we do lie and call it compost….. pile them off to the side in the woods, outa the way and ignore them
2. Burn pile, dangerous if you dont have a good spot to do it (we are heavily wooded so no go for us)
3. Chipper and use it for walkways or compost
4. Goats
You could start a dead hedge
If I were in your shoes, I’d buy or rent a chipper and chip them. Then you can use the wood chips als mulch to improve soil quality and suppress weeds, or you can compost it.
Or you can make a long pile for the wildlife and let it break down slowly.
Or you can burn it.