I have a question. I have, cumulatively over the course of the growing season, yards and yards of organic material like pine needles (long leaf pine not fir-types), pinecones, leaves, balls off gum trees, sticks and limbs from trees, grass clippings, weeds, etc. produced in my yard. I sort-of compost some of it (I heap it up and let it lay for a year or so) but I would really like to make mulch out of the rest of it. The pine needles take much longer to break down and are a nice reddish-tan color and I think would make nice mulch. The problem is that they are so mixed in with leaves, etc. that there is no effective way to separate them. I can't afford a chipper/shredder right now and have been trying to come up with some alternative way to shred, chop, or somehow mechanically cut up a mixture of pine needles, leaves, small sticks, and pinecones/gum tree balls. Driving the truck back and forth over the piles don't work, using the lawn mower with or withouth the grass mulching attachment doesn't work, weed eater in a plastic barrel full of material doesn't work. I have a large pair of hedge shears that I never use. I thought about putting one handle in a vise attached to a sawhorse and using it to chop the material, but that would take forever.

Any suggestions?

-- HannahMariaHolly (hannahholly@hotmail.com), June 14, 2001

Answers

Pine nettles are high in acid and you don,t see much growing under pine trees; just for ground cover they would be ok. Maybe you could find an independant tree trimmer that you could hire to run the stuff through his shredder or rent a shredder for a day and do it yourself.

-- mitch hearn (moopups1@aol.com), June 14, 2001.

Pine needles are something I have plenty of. Ijust Vacuum them up with a snapper high vacuum, and put them in a pile. The neighbors all come and help themselves. One year I sold them (delivered )for $15 a pickup load , but decided that was too much trouble for the money. Now the nurserys are selling them by the bale. I would advise you not to try to use them for mulch.

-- George Wilson (cwwhtw@aol.com), June 14, 2001.

Hi, I am the proud recipient of all the grass clippings, limbs, weeds, hedge trimmings, etc. of a fairly medium sized landscape contractor; I am fortunate enough to live next door to his last stop, and so he donates all this stuff to me in order to save himself some money at the dump, not to mention the transportation costs.

He's dumping it about three feet deep all over a small "meadow" down by the road below my place. Currently all the meadow grows is a lot of Star Thistle, as it's made up entirely of crummy fill from the county.

My plan is to let the stuff break down naturally; I'm told that it will do so in three or so years, with no effort on my part. I DO pull out the occassional large diameter limb, in order to speed up the process a bit, though. I'll be using it for top dressing of my veggie garden, flower gardens, etc. Plus, after most of it's removed, I'll plant a bunch of Cedar trees where the meadow is now, and have the stuff dumped on another of my poorer soil areas.

I've had good luck doing this in the past with the chipped up material graciously donated by the line clearing crews. In fact, when the stuff is chipped, it takes only a year or two to start looking like potting soil!

If you can stand to look at it for a few years, or if it's in a non visible place on your property, just let it lie there!

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), June 14, 2001.

I have a friend that uses pine needles for her shade gardens. She gets several pick up turck loads every year from a neighbor as she keeps enlarging her gardens. Keep in mind that they don't decompose well, so for mulch they are great. Maybe try renting a shredder for a day or two. It is amazing how much one can shred in a day. Or watch your local papers for a used one, or put an add for one. We got ours that way, paid $75 for it and it was like new. A guy had bought it for clean-up on his property as he cleared it. They didn't have the well in yet and couldn't burn without the water. He used it one season. Do you maybe have a neighbor that you could barter with for the use of it for a day or so. Bartering works really well here. I got three americana hens from a guy and he just wanted a few eggs hatched from them as he didn't have a rooster, we have also trimmed goat hoofs for a guy and got 45 guinea eggs and when they hatched, sold the keets. Try things like that for the use of a shredder. If you were my neighbor I would loan you mine.

-- Barb (bralsteen@ez-net.com), June 15, 2001.

Long leaf pine straw and live oak leaves (of course) are ALL I use for mulch at my place and they work just fine. After a couple of years you may need to adjust the soil pH with a bit of lime but as limestone rocks (and occasional boulders) are a plague and a nusiance where I'm at I haven't found it necessary yet.

You might try raking all this stuff up into long, low rows and mowing them over with your lawn mower. I have a bagger on my mower and a mulching blade so it chops pine straw, oak leaves, and grass up and shoves it in the bagger. I dump the bag into the nearby wheelbarrow and then dump that on the garden or hen house when it's full. Works well for me.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), June 15, 2001.

Pine needles are greatly acidic and therefore wonderful for your berry plants. You can mulch your berries with them the way they are.

I had read once where somebody took an old lawnmower and somehow rigged the motor/blades into a metal garbage can and used that for chopping/shredding. I can't remember exactly where I read it, but if you think about it real hard and can find a way to mount it it seems like it just might work.

Good luck.

www.geocities.com/shilohschild

-- Shiloh's Child (shilohschild@christianemail.com), June 17, 2001.