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Oak leaves - shredding & composting

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  • #1

    Oak leaves - shredding & composting

    I have 4 very large old oaks on my property (and one on my neighbours) that produce tons (and i mean stupid amounts) of leaves every year. I am currently adding them to three pretty large compost heaps but given the pretty slow breakdown times of oak leaves i am not sure they are going to be able to keep up given the volume i have to cope with.

    I am looking at getting a shredder. It will have to be something pretty substantial probably on the edge of professional usage as i know anything else will likely pack up pretty quickly given the work it will have to do.

    My questions:

    1) anyone have any experience of composting large amounts of oak leaves? Do you bother to shred them and does it improve breakdown time?
    2) does anyone have a leaf shredder they can recommend? most of the heavier duty models seem to be more aimed at branches and have a relatively narrow feeder

    Many thanks for your help

    Guy
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Can you mow them, to chop them up?
    3 old oaks here, I just rake them up and bung them in with the other leaves (mostly ash).

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    • #3
      As VC says, if you run over them with a mulch mower with a collector box on, that should do the trick.

      Alternatively use a leaf blower/sucker with a collection bag. With the sucker/picker upper on it sucks them up,chops them up, and feads them into a large bag. Or you could take the bag off, suck them up and it will blast the chopped up leaves out the back, ready to be raked up.
      My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
      to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

      Diversify & prosper


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      • #4
        I would run the mower over them. Does two jobs, one chops them up and two gathers them up. Then I would make a large separate bin just for leaves. I have one, à mètre cube and it is filled up in the autumn and by spring has shrunk to half full. A bit of weight helps to compact the leaves. I only empty mine every two years and get loads of lovely leaf mould.
        Last edited by roitelet; 15-02-2017, 06:21 PM.
        Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet

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        • #5
          I had considered mowing them but that is going to make them even worse to collect...
          They are frankly a bit of a nightmare and the only aspect i'm really not enjoying about having a big garden.

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          • #6
            A nightmare!! Nah!!
            Just leave them to rot down in situ as nature does. That's what I do with the leaves that fall on the beds. Its a free mulch
            I only rake up the ones on the grass.

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            • #7
              I blow as many as i can back into the hedges and beds but i am not exaggerating at the tonnage involved ...its really silly how much there is and the stuff on the lawn i have to blow into piles and cart away.

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              • #8
                I've been looking into this as I can get loads of leaves just walking a tree lined field to my plots. There was a YouTube thread that I watched were they shredded leaves recommended 4x, put in tonne bags and added a urine / manure wash to them in a watering can. Quoting 6 months to compost. I've looked at petrol leaf vacs that shred but there good and bad reviews. A guy on the allotment has a stilh leaf vac that I'm going to try this out before spending on one. If it works then jobs a good'un. The stand shredders are more geared for sticks and quoted packing just leaves would keep jamming it up. Your supposed to shred the leaves just after they've fallen so they've still got nutriens in them and not old brown ones.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by GBax View Post
                  I had considered mowing them but that is going to make them even worse to collect...
                  They are frankly a bit of a nightmare and the only aspect i'm really not enjoying about having a big garden.
                  Put the grass box on. You will have to empty it frequently but it is easier than raking them up.
                  Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet

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                  • #10
                    For leaves you do not need a big one, they just sit there spinning when not actually shredding. I have a B&D 1400. Which I assume is 1400 watts. When I use it I feed stuff in and let it shred, while I go get another set of bits to shred.

                    The problem is that you can get very little into it at a go, and it means you generally have to be there putting the stuff in. I know they are made for safety but the way they make the "safe" means they are not very user friendly.

                    It says it can handle a 30mm stick but the hole at the top restricts the size to less and you generally managed one lump of wood at a time. For getting leaves in I am not sure what size a shredder you would have to look at but check the bit you feed material into, as that in my experience tends to be the problem area. It gets difficult to just feed it a small bunch of five twigs that are only 2 or 3mm diameter. They just will not go in easily. You sort of need one with a funnel on it to empty a bucket full into while you go get another.

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                    • #11
                      I gather from the local school field and a local Tye, At the pulic Tye I let the wind heap some of them together then rake them onto small tarp and tip that into my car trailer a few times. my car trailer has some taller sides made of pallet planks to increase volume for lightweight loads, you could do similar to a wheelbarrow) The school field backs onto my garden so a rotary mower set high and open the flap to chop and push the leaves to one side. I go round in ever decreasing circles and then rake onto the tarp. Small tarps means no fiddling trying to hold open sacks or unpack a stuffed grass box. It's all about easy/minimal handling and I collect a lot of leaves.
                      Chicken wire cage, back the stuffed trailer up and rake/fork out the contents. Stamp them into the cage, add some top soil (a spit or two sprinkled over)to seed the microbes and go get another load. Repeat until full then add urine/nitrogon or chop nettles or both to accelerate. In one year they are great mulch/organic fertiliser, in two it's like seed compost all crumbly. Like composting generally the bigger the volume the better the breakdown with just the outsides looking recognisable.
                      My sources include Oak but I try to avoid areas of only oak because I have a decent selection.

                      HTH.

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                      • #12
                        I've several oaks at the end of my allotment which drop shedloads of leaves in autumn. I collect them into old builders bags (a bit holey at the bottom) and leave bags open at the top. By the next autumn I've lovely black soil conditioner in the bottom of the bags. Just hoick out the top leaves that haven't yet broken down and put them in the bottom of empty bag to start another lot off. Cant resist all that free compost material. I've also used them as layers in lasagne gardening where they seem to break down even quicker.

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