Last weekend and the weekend before I cut down a heap of trees on my boundary and fed them through my electric wood chipper, which is a barrel type, so has created roughly 2cm by 4cm wood chips.
The problem is, I have a lot of wood chips in a couple big piles on my neighbour's overgrown section. His section was never cleared, it's literally just bush, so he doesn't really mind the piles, but I'd still like to speed up the decomposition of the chips/reduce the size of the piles and haven't really found any info on how to do it.
I've heard I can douse the chip piles with sugar and water to help it rot away, but I was thinking about buying an electric shredder and just dumping the chips in and reducing them into a very fine pile.
Can anyone offer me any suggestions, please?
msnz1,
Feb 23, 2:59am
Advertise "free wood chips" somewhere. Welcome
ryans,
Feb 23, 3:02am
It's not really uniform though, some leaves and small green branches didn't separate when mulched, so there are some long bits with cut marks down the side.
I think I might just buy some compost bins, $40 for a 240l bin from Bunnings, which is quite a good price, last time I looked I remembered them being really expensive, so I might get a few of those, load them up and leave them for a year or two.
piquant,
Feb 23, 3:55am
Like compost, the centre of those big piles will heat up really well and rot down quite quickly. I'm not sure if you are trying to get composted mulch or just dispose of it as quickly as possible.
ryans,
Feb 23, 5:02am
I just want to get rid of it, I can't use it yet and don't want to just leave it in the neighbour's section.
lythande1,
Feb 23, 11:23am
Spread them out over the section. water and time will do the rest. But spread rather than a pile.
ira78,
Feb 23, 1:55pm
I'd suggest, rather than buying an electric shredder, rent a good petrol one. Probably chop it up finer and definitely will do it a lot quicker. I bet you could feed it all through in a day without trying hard if you rent a nice big one.
macandrosie,
Feb 23, 3:30pm
Great as garden mulch around shrubs, or advertise to take away.
bill1451,
Feb 24, 3:01am
An electric shredder will just frustrate you as all the ones Ive seen are gutless And only good for rose cuttings, nothing over 10mm diameter
ianab,
May 27, 3:25pm
Because the neighbour isn't worried, I would just spread the piles out and let them rot. A large heap might take years to break down, but if you spread it out so it's only 2-5 cm layer, the weeds and scrub will be growing up through it in no time.
The thin layer has plenty of contact with soil bacteira and fungus, plus oxygen and water, so it breaks down fast. A meter deep pile, it takes ages.
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