Howdy all. Looking for recommendations for a chipper/shredder for the homestead. Have a couple of acres of brush and small trees that need cleaned up and would like to make mulch for in between the garden beds if possible.
by KSHomesteader
Howdy all. Looking for recommendations for a chipper/shredder for the homestead. Have a couple of acres of brush and small trees that need cleaned up and would like to make mulch for in between the garden beds if possible.
by KSHomesteader
9 Comments
Do you have a tractor? If so you should get a PTO driven chipper.
Woodland Mills….great machine
Chipdrop, or rent a chipper. My experience with everything small has been bad. I have a buddy who likes his helical chipper, but he’s only using it occasionally.
We cleared 5-6 acres by grubbing and burning with an excavator. That works better.
We use chip drop for wood chips when required. They’re worth checking out if you’re doing any extensive gardening.
Rent. You can get a high powered chipper much cheaper and you won’t have to deal with maintenance and wear.
Check marketplace or local equipment auctions for a PTO driven chipper. I bought a small 10hp tow behind chipper and I hate it. It struggles with anything larger than 2.5″ diameter and the wood chips it makes are very small more like shavings than chips. However it is great for brush and leaves.
I bought it for $275 off marketplace and had to replace the flails on it for another $150 ( previous owner said it worked perfectly)
You can always move it along once your done with it.
I have a 6″ DK2 chipper, I think it’s an OPC566E. Probably the same thing as what you listed here, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were all made in one Chinese factory and different stickers were slapped on for different brands. Bought it used, ran the hell out of it, and it’s been great.
I bought it because a friend was clearing out brush on his homestead and was chewing about renting or buying one. I figured I could use it too as my property was about the same size. So I bought the 6″ thinking anything that won’t fit through it I can use for firewood. We ran the hell out of it all summer and we’ll into the fall, and probably made fifteen or twenty yards of wood chips with it (mostly buckthorn, I might add – some of the hardest shrub/tree wood, right up there with hickory) and it never once gave us trouble.
Brought it home and so far I’ve used it for spring cleanup, turning ornamental grass into straw mulch for the garden, and let all my neighbors and family use it for their various projects. We do a lot of composting and mulching around here, and all the yard waste goes back into either gardens or the woods. This machine is instrumental in keeping that going because it breaks down the sticks and limbs much quicker than nature does. The blades are easy to sharpen and cheap to replace, the engine is a Kohler clone of a Honda so it hasn’t given us a lick of trouble, and it’s incredibly easy to maneuver around the yard with a riding mower as well as by hand.
I also do firewood for my parents, my fireplace, and I sell a little out front. I primarily get firewood from helping suburbanites clean up trees that fall down in their yards after storms. Before I could only take the big limbs and trunks, but now I can make a pile of mulch for them from all the branches and twigs as well, or even take it home and make my own mulch with it!
My recommendation is if you have use for it once or twice a year, just rent one. But if you have a community of people near you (neighbors, family, friends) that can each make use of it, definitely get it. It’s an absolute monster for eating and processing yard waste and stormfall.
This is a chipper and not a shredder, ask me how I know. It works great on branches but doesn’t help me with other stuff for the compost pile
Had a hammermill shredder that had a chipper on the side. We used it for vegetable bed waste, kitchen scraps, weeds, bamboo, pampas grass (that did need more frequent cleaning). Could also handle branches up tp 2″. Until our compost pile spontaneously combusted and took the shredder with it.
If you have a tractor look at getting one that hooks on back and uses the tractor power takeout. Much more powerful and able to take larger branches than the little stand alone models designed for suburbia.
I have that particular chipper you posted the image of. It’s pretty good. Downside is no electric start.