small electric woodchipper, would it work?

[fd3]

I have a long hedge which requires quite a bit of cutting back, pruning it has generated a good deal of smallish woody bits.  I could pay for an annual green waste collection, but I thought that as we use quite a bit of wood chip on the garden anyway I might be able to get a small electric woodchipper, which between the cost of wood chip and green waste would be cost neutral. 
Wondering whether the chipper would work or whether I am likely to produce shredded wood suitable only for composting.  I would value any thoughts you might have.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I have no experience of this, but strongly suspect that remarkably little woodchip will be produced from one hedge. Could you borrow one for a test run?

[Aunt Maud]

I lay all my hedge cuttings in a strip and run over it with the mower. It chops it up nicely, then I add it to the compost.

I've used a small electric chipper before, but found that the mower worked best and neither of them produced anything other than compost quality stuff.

[Wobbly John]

I have a small shredder/chipper, but rarely use it. It is fine for longish straightish bits of material, but anything contorted or with side branches is time consuming as it needs to be prepared so much before use.

I am able to take branches and clippings to the allotment to dry off and burn, which is how I get rid of most woody garden waste.

[jiberjaber]

I use an Aldi chipper and when I trim back our massive Laurel hedge, I leave the cuttings to dry and then chip them and use the chippings for cover on the boarders.

[Kim]

If your green waste collection involves plastic bags, then bear in mind there's a circle of hell where you have to spend all day stuffing twigs into bin-liners without puncturing them.

[fd3]

Hmmm might try the lawn mower and see what happens.  I could hire a chipper, but I think it would be about £30, or half the cost of buying one.

[Aunt Maud]

Make sure it's sharp, which is easily done with an angle grinder.

[madcow]

I have a medium sized  Bosch electric chipper/shredder. It's only real use is to reduce the volume of material to put in the green waste bin or bags.
It doesn't reduce branches to chips , but fragments them. 
The modern  electric machines don't seem to spin fast enough to produce mulch like material .

[The French Tandem]

In my experience, entry level chippers made in the far East are crap. They will choke as soon as you feed a slightly bigger than usual piece of wood in them. Don't lose your money on that sort of things!

[HeltorChasca]

In my experience, entry level chippers made in the far East are crap. They will choke as soon as you feed a slightly bigger than usual piece of wood in them. Don't lose your money on that sort of things!

Here is the wisdom. Even the smaller Timberwolf chippers snarl up. Chuck a yucca in and watch.

[HeltorChasca]

I lay all my hedge cuttings in a strip and run over it with the mower. It chops it up nicely, then I add it to the compost.

I've used a small electric chipper before, but found that the mower worked best and neither of them produced anything other than compost quality stuff.

And here is a good method. My mower is industrial so this is easier, but with domestic mowers, run along the clippings using just half your deck width. Little and often.

[runsoncake]

Anything a bit green or sappy can mix with woody dust to gunge the blades up and cause blockages. Let stuff dry first or go for the mower option it's quicker​ an easier.
Hedge trimmings are good in compost  as the stems add some "brown" material to the mix which helps aeration.

[Bledlow]

Our allotment plot is at the edge of the site, & bordered by a bloody great hedge. Trimmings have been going in the compost for the last 5 years, since we got it. They're added when fresh & green & they disappear. They probably help stop the compost getting too compacted, which since most of what goes in is weeds, vegetable trimmings & some grass clippings, is a risk.

[Poly Hive]

We are looking for a machine to deal with the waste from our herbaceous border. Any suggestions?

PH

[CAMRAMan]

I've just hacked away merrily at the rampant forsythia in our garden. It produced a large mound of waste, as did the laurel I also trimmed and various other clippings. In an hour and a half, I reduced the lot to five 40L trugs of chippings that I added to the compost bin and the green waste collection bin. I also poured some straight onto the garden as a mulch.

My Alko shredder coped well without one snarl up. It managed branches up to about 15mm thick through the dedicated branch feeder and could probably have done thicker, but I erred on the side of caution. I got it for about £40 on eBay three years or so ago, but spent another £30 having the blades professionally sharpened

Forsythias produce long, spindly branches and these were fiddly to feed into the shredder, so after the first 45 minutes I spent shredding on Sunday I spent some time cutting up the bits into manageable lengths. This really helped when I did the second lot last night before the rain.

I use mine a couple of times a year, but it's good to know I can reduce waste down very substantially whenever I need to.

[rafletcher]

We used to have a powerful rotary mower.  We used to "mow" our hedge clippings.

[bikepacker]

In my experience, entry level chippers made in the far East are crap. They will choke as soon as you feed a slightly bigger than usual piece of wood in them. Don't lose your money on that sort of things!

+1 We got one of the cheaper ones and it ended up at the local tip.

[pcolbeck]

I have a Bosch chipper that I have had for years. Its a helical screw type that crushes the branches to pieces. It works fine on woody stuff but will clog quickly on green or sappy stuff.
So pleased with it I just ordered a Bosch AXT Raped 2200 blade shredder to compliment it and do the green stuff.

In my experience the electric garden grade stuff works fine you just have to realise what they are intended to work with and what wont work and that they are not in the same league as a petrol driven professional chipper / shredder.

[pcolbeck]

Well after testing it this weekend the Rapid 2200 is brilliant! It shredded brambles, hedge clippings, and all the plants we were tidying up from the borders. It even dispatched the dreaded ivy with aplomb.
The manual says dont do thick woody stuff especially if its been left to dry out for ages, but we have the old shredder that only does woody stuff for that. Recommended and Mrs Pcolbeck - (who is in charge of all things horticultural bar power tools) is very impressed and gave me a gold star for buying it. Now to see how long the blade lasts.

[Aunt Maud]

You should be able to sharpen it with a file too.