Shredding!

[Palustris]

We have a few large clumps of a large Miscanthus (if you see a Stobart lorry with Bio fuels on it, then that is what it is full of). I cut down the stems around now and a BIG job it is too. We are talking probably a thousand or so 12 foot tall canes here. they will not rot and are too big to go in the Compost bin for the Council. so I have to shred them. I spent all day doing that yesterday and filled 18, 80 litre compost bags. There are still a fair number of stalks left to be done another day.  The stuff makes a good very long lasting mulch. Trouble is that today I have been in so much pain that I have done nothing much.
Does anyone else have jobs like that? You know, ones which must be done but oh...........

[NightHawk]

Does anyone else have jobs like that? You know, ones which must be done but oh...........

One word Eric ...... leaves!

Our location is beautiful.  Trees all around us, magnificent during the summer, but come Autumn they shed all their wonderful foliage.

Quite a large quantity of those leaves end up in our garden, clogging up the flower beds and giving the lawn a nice 'brown' coating.

I've got a power leaf blower/sucker-up machine that also shreds the leaves and puts them into the attached bag.  I've had to do this little task a number of times and only last week I was out 'hoovering' the garden again.

I'd only just started when the machine stopped working    I finished the job by hand using a metal scarifier.
I later took the machine apart and found that over a period of time it had got clogged up with impacted soil and leaves.  This had occurred while sucking up leaves from the flower beds and soil had also been sucked up.  I had to poke it all out with a stout stick.  It worked and is now in full working order again.

Needless to say I won't do that again.  Next time I'll use the blower setting on the flower beds and blow the leaves onto the lawn and suck them up from there.

Not as big a task as your stems Eric, but still a job that needs doing on a regular basis, for a few months each year anyway 

Laurie.

[Palustris]

We have that problem too, but I tend to use the blower and blow the leaves off the paths on to the borders as a mulch. Not as many leaves as there are in the New Forest though.

[ideasguy]

I gather as many leaves as I can and bag them up for leaf mould - its great for the Rhododendrons and Camellias.
I leave the leaves which fall into the border and allow them to decompose and make a useful mulch - a free lunch for the worms.
They are great for smothering weeds and eliminate weedlings.

Come December and January, the Blackbirds get to work, vigorously chucking the leaves about (sometimes back onto the lawn!) looking for grubs underneath, so I think they are beneficial for a number of reasons.

We have now removed that large Ash tree so we didn't have to wade through leaves to get into the house this year!

[Palustris]

It sounds as if our grasses are a problem, but they are not really. Unlike Bamboo say, they are not invasive. the roots are fairly shallow and easy enough to dig out (except where they grew through the pond liner). they are also good ground cover and few weeds manage to grow in the clumps. If we did not have them then we would have to plant something else and they would probably be just as much trouble.
Another plant which gives us a certain amount of grief as far as stem disposal, is Rudbeckia maxima. The woody stems of this will not rot and are very hard to shred. I often have had to break them up and burn them.