Re: [gardeners] chipper/shredder
M T (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Tue, 17 Sep 2002 20:02:14 -0700 (PDT)
Hi Margaret!
Yep, it's me. Hope you're doing great and having a great year.
I'm coming out of lurk mode to ask a few questions for now. Have been
obnoxiously busy at work. 50 to 80 hours a week since March and usually
at least 6 days a week. The paychecks are great, but it's burning a
hole in my pocket.
Work is getting in the way of my gardening and personal life! ;-)
The mower idea sounds great. We used to do that for the lawn in the
old yard.
This house has a nice little postage stamp sized yard. It's roughly 50
by 60 in the back, and 40 by 60 in the front, including the sidewalk
and hell strip. We eliminated the lawn in the back completely. The next
major project is putting in the 30' round patio in the center of the
back yard beds.
Most of the trees are in the back. With the mower option I'll need to
rake them, drag them to the front, mow them, rerake the mulch and bring
it back to the backyard beds. The main advantage to this system will be
the leavings in the frontyard grass. The front yard is a lot more
compacted than the back, and can use the organic matter.
Back when I fantasized about being finished the backyard by September
(of this year!) I planned on airating the front and replacing the weedy
bermuda with a nice tall fescue lawn. Fall is the best time to plant
tall fescue around here. Spring planted fescue usually fries in the
summer and gets weedy quickly.
Tall fescue is expensive and a pain to maintain in this area, but with
such a tiny plot of it to deal with, I could afford the pleasant
aggrievation of competing with my dad (the Lawn God) in
Massachussettes.
It will have to wait at least a year. This years drought meant I only
had to mow 5 times! Wasting water on a lawn doesn't really seem too
important right now, especially one that barely makes it through a
normal summer here.
A few people have said they were very dissappointed with their
Flowtrons.
I might spring for the electric chipper anyway. Since it's only $200,
I can afford a new toy right now. ;-)
Thanks for your advice, hope you have a great autumn!
Matt in Norfolk, Va. USDA zone 8
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 08:13:56 -0600
From: Margaret Lauterbach <melauter@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [gardeners] chipper/shredder
Matt Trahan, is this you? those leaf shredders don't hold a candle to
a
lawnmower's shredding ability. Some people put leaves in a metal trash
barrel, then lower a regular weedeater inside. That does as well as
the
weedeater-type of leaf shredder. But it's still inferior to a
lawnmower
that exerts some suction as it passes over dry leaves. Margaret L
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