August 1st, 2010 by Marc Opperman

I have a 5.5 horsepower chipper-shredder made by Craftsman in probably the 80s. My dad acquired it when a neighbor of his decided to sell or give it away – not sure which. I had to replace some rubber aprts of the air intake, and the starter cord, but that was pretty easy and cheap. It’s a solid machine, and does a very good job of turning bits of organic matter into smaller bits of organic matter. On the minus side, however, it uses a lot of gasoline and spews pollution like nobody’s business. And it’s loud. I have to use ear protection with it.

Still, it’s a great piece of the composting arsenal at my disposal. It does take some prep to break down stuff to be shredded – branches and other materials generally need to be trimmed down so they don’t get hung in the chutes, but once you get things to that stage, it’s wonderful to use. Oh, and it helps if branches aren’t too green. If they are, they tend to – sometimes – bend more than shred and get stuck in the blades.

This past weekend I hauled it out, parked it in the shade, and managed to get it started with the first pull of the cord. That impressed me. I have so much material in the yard I knew I wouldn’t finish the job, but I did make a two-hour dent in it. I took a substantial pile of branches from the ash tree in front and turned those into a whole wheelbarrow of mulch. Next up, a bunch of partially-rotten cedar fence slats. Those make wonderful, arromatic mulch. Lastly, I made a decent dent in the Chinese tallow branches I’d stacked up. Much of that material is 1″ – 3″ inches in diameter, so I had to use the secondary chute for those.

All said, I made three wheelbarrows of mulch, some of which went in beds, and some the compost heap. Though, considering how much gas usage and pollution this thing is responsible for, and how much time it takes, I’m not sure making my own mulch balances out all that well. Still, I like using this thing, It reminds me of my grandfathers (though there’s no real connection I can discern) AND that end scene of Fargo. Okay, maybe that’s disturbing.

There’s still much more to do, but it was a great start.

From this:

to this:

chinese tallow, chipper-shredder, craftsman, mulch

July 2nd, 2010 by Marc Opperman

Now that I look at it in the daylight, the tree, while not doing any structural damage to our house or porch, affected every planting area I have in the back yard. It crushed nearly all of my native wildflowers, flattened a bed of native grasses, and took out one tomato vine completely. A rather large flame acanthus and very healthy rose pavonia were both shredded and broken near their bases. I found pieces of the tree in my container herb garden. They broke a number of those plants. A small border structure I made out of pieces of a crepe myrtle is almost directly under the tree, flattened. Somewhere under the trunk, too, are the twisted remnants of a tomato cage.

The trunk of the tree, with a diameter of somewhere around a foot, is laying across the two paths I use to access the compost heap and an area that needs mowing. And with this rain – forecast to last another 10 days or so – it’ll be tough to get in and clean things up. Though what wasn’t broken will certainly grow like mad with all the rain.

Yet somehow, I’m still excited by all this. It really does give me a chance to start with an almost-clean slate. Once the heavy clean-up is done, I can reassess what plants should stay and what should go, and create more openness in the back yard. For some time now, the space back there has been too dense, too crowded. I’ve let too many plants come up from seed for the spaces they are in. In a year, the back yard will look completely different, I’m convinced.

chinese tallow, damage, storm, tree

July 1st, 2010 by Marc Opperman

…and you’re making garden salsa indoors at the time, does it still make a sound?

Why, yes! Just not very much of one.

Weakened by a few days of rain and, well, having died last year after I girdled it, a 40-foot Chinese tallow in my back yard gave up its ghost this evening and fell in a very courteous manner. (Thanks to Jenna for the apt adjective.) Instead of falling on the neighbor’s yard, crushing the fence, crushing our garage, wiping out our deck, or any number of other nasty scenarios, the dead tree simply crushed one tomato plant and a LOT of wildflowers and missed everything else entirely. I was even tired of that tomato vine, too. The tree trunk is completely blocking all of my back paths, though I’m convinced a day with a good chainsaw and things will be passable again.

It is conceivable it could have crushed me, though. I was in that very spot several times earlier in the evening picking tomatoes and leaf-foots. Instead, I was inside making a very delicious garden salsa with my own porter and cherry tomatoes, and jalapeños. Salsa saves the day!

I suppose it will present a bunch of new opportunities for planting things, and change the pecking order of a few of the plants. Two very large autumn sages appear to have borne the brunt of much of the fall, and given how brittle those are under normal circumstances, I’m sure they’re mostly toast. As it was getting dark when it happened, I still don’t know the full extent of what’s beneath.

I’m actually quite excited about this. I killed the tree intentionally, as it’s an allelopathic non-native/invasive trash tree, and it shaded a significant part of my yard (but not the house). I’ve been pondering how to get rid of it for some time without having the $400 or more to have it professionally removed. After girdling it, I’d weakened most of the larger branches with cuts hoping it would come down in pieces, but none of those ever did the trick. This, however, took care of it in one nice swoop. On to the clean-up!

The salsa, by the way, is delicious.

chinese tallow, tree