Garden Shredders

• Discover which type of garden shredders suit your needs & how they do the job.
• How to work when your shrubby, hedgy, garden starts branching out fast...
• All the accessories you need for the job are here.

• How do you easily move a sprawling mass of branches and hedge trimmings?
• How do you fit branches into a convenient space or get them all into the green waste container?
• How do you avoid spending hours cutting up branches, while enduring piles of branches everywhere?
• Paying for disposal adds a regular extra cost & at inconvenient times - I'd have to wait weeks.
• Then - owning the machine is not so much - & look - the way to your garden is always within your site.
• Can you afford not to use a garden shredder?

Although the celebration fires on estates during the Fall festivals are popular, they would be happening somewhere else at another time. I need the job doing now.

So I've used several garden shredders over many years and now I would not finish my garden work in a timely way without one. I don't hesitate to renew them when they become tired or a better model appears.

Below, I share lessons learned and describe several types of garden chippers and shredders that I've owned. I will critically describe my latest garden shredder & what I will buy next for my future gardening tasks where, in my garden, the shrubs are always fast becoming trees. Let's find out more...

Here's What Garden Shredders Can Do For You

• Reduce garden waste from a sprawling pile of cuttings and branches and prickles, to a vastly smaller volume that's easily moved around by a shovel and rake, and easily carried in filled bags.
• Make your own fragrant conifer wood chip for garden paths, & to use around plants as garden mulch.
• Make old tough green stems of cabbage and tomato etc... compost quicker from fine shreds - & reduce the time disease spores have to spread.
• Lay down your home made chippings & mulch during a dry summer to help retain moisture in your soil. You'll save on buying that stuff.
• Your shreds and chips are also used as cover before winter time to insulate your soil. You will get an earlier warmer start for growing in spring.
  So, many good things & - time well spent all around!

Leaf shredders are also very popular garden tools, so I've included information about them, for you, further down the page - see further below >>

Garden Shredders & Wood Chippers Work By Different Mechanisms

• Shredding Disk and Anvil with Controlled Entry & Exit Size:- These rapid garden shredders (e.g. the Bosche AXT 2000 Rapid series or the Sun Joe CJ600 series) have a fly wheel with two slits bearing double sided shredding knives. The disk spins up to high speed and the fly wheel momentum helps to maintain speed. There is an anvil plate in the cutting chamber which holds against the material being shredded by the knives.
  
  
  

  AXT Rapid Shredder -
  Fast disposal of hedge trimmings, stalks & light branch...

  

  Sun Jo - High Velocity value
  Garden Shredder USA for fast disposal of hedge clippings

  The hopper has supports to steady the feed. A feed pusher assists feeding in and clearing exit port blockages. The size of the exit acts like a screen to ensure larger material is shredded down to size before exit. Blockages can be cleared superfast - disconnect - simply unscrew the large knob & the top comes right off for clearing.
  
  Note - these types of shredder are not wood chippers. They are useful for fine hedge cuttings, and will quickly dispose of tough plant stalks. That is what they are for.
  
  Modern versions of these simple machines do not have pre-cutting knives above the shredding disk which means less noise. However, for branches, the significant down side with my 2017 Bosche Rapid shredder was that without precutting blades above the shredding disk, many branches shred into long strips. I would not get this model again. Also - the switch-on/off mechanism is a little flimsy.
  but see the turbine shredder - better & more below >>>

• Shredding Disks & Pre Cutting Knives:- The first of my garden shredders had precutting knives positioned above a shredding disk that rotated rapidly.
  
  It worked well with twigs and softer material. Branches go through with more noise and vibration but there was a side shoot direct to the shredding knives. It made nice piles of crumbly chips.
  Note:- Precutting knives are important - because a shredding disk alone may turn many branches into long strips instead of the finer cut chips & crumbs that you probaby want in the finished material.

• Cutting & Crushing quietly:- These are more properly described as garden chippers. They use a spiked drum to grip, cut and crush branches, against another drum or an anvil plate.
  
  The machine works with a slow beautifully quiet steady beat, though it gets through more material by weight nevertheless. It is especially useful and powerful when branches are your main material for turning into wood chips.

For links to:- Wood Chippers / Shredders and to Specialised Leaf Shredders >>>  V V V V  check further down the page V V V V

• Turbine Cutting Blades shreds green twigs, along with branches & thorns up to 4cm. This system uses a cone of rotating blades, which makes the feed automatic. Use the reverse drive if it gets blocked.
  
  The mechanism runs quietly and it should easily deal with both wood and greenery. see the Bosche AXT25 series.

• Screw Cut & Crush not illustrated, uses a screw to draw larger branches in to cut them against a plate. Screw feeds are often used to feed branches into larger machines with the hammer mill mechanism illustrated next. I like this mechanism but Bosche have stopped making their screw cut AXT 2200HP.

• Hammer Mill and Shredding Disk Knives do a precut followed by a shredding disk. It deals with both leaves and wood. Branches can be fed direct to the shredding disk through a special port.
• my next machine will be bigger and more powerful.
  Bigger with more power makes sense for my garden because the wood is growing bigger every year. Owning a bigger machine is faster, more effective & better than annually paying garden companies that are very busy to come when needed. - I'll get the job done much quicker too - see below

• Thrash & Bash chip bigger wood and shred leaves. Larger professional machines will take larger branches simply thrown into a hopper and screw fed. They have screens that contain the material inside a hammer mill until it is shredded suitably fine. They dispose of larger material very quickly. Used by tree surgeons and professionals, they may include a tow bar.
  
  - Look below to find your garden shredders...vVv...vVv...

 By Michael E. J. Scott.
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