Man I used to haul branches to the dump one truckload at a time until I rented achipper for $75 last spring and now I feel like an idiot for the 8 years before that.

Had a whole pile of oak limbs from a big storm sitting in my backyard for 3 months, and after spending $150 on dump fees and 4 trips in one Saturday, my neighbor let me borrow his 6-inchchipper for a day and I turned that whole mess into mulch in under 2 hours, has anyone else had that moment where you realize youve been making things way harder than they need to be?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby4949d ago

Hold on though, is turning a pile of branches into mulch really that life changing? I mean, I get that it saves you some trips to the dump, but you're still spending money on the rental and the gas to run the thing. Plus now you gotta deal with a mountain of mulch that you might not even have a use for, that stuff attracts termites if you pile it up against your house. I've seen people go overboard with chippers and then they're just stuck with wood chips for years.

richard1108d ago

One angle I haven't seen mentioned is how long those chips actually take to break down. I did a big job a few years back and piled the mulch around some young trees and shrubs. Softwood chips from pine and cedar break down in like a season or two, but hardwood chunks from oak or maple can sit there looking exactly the same for three or four years. Ended up with a decorative circle of basically bark that wouldn't compost no matter what I did. So the wood type matters way more than people realize when they're deciding if it's worth the hassle.