Mulch Me, Maybe

September 1, 2013 5:42 AM

Bronx WoodchipperFilter: we have a ~ 24ft x 12ft x 7ft mess of branches in our backyard after a massive clean-up. We thought the most efficient way to take care of it would be to use a wood chipper to turn it into mulch to spread across the backyard-- what's the best way to go about this?

Basically:

1) Where's the cheapest place to rent a wood chipper in the Bronx if you don't have a car? Is my best option walking down to the Home Depot, or are there deals likely to be found on Craigslist / talking to my local hardware store or maybe any of the landscapers working on nearby lawns?

2) Is there a cheaper / better way to take care of all these gd branches? Bagging is probably out of the question since we couldn't end up w/ any mulch to spread around; plus, it'd take a loooooong time and we'd possibly end up spending more on black bags than on a wood chipper rental. Burning it all is also not an option

posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches to Home & Garden (13 answers total)

How thick are the branches? For anything thicker than an inch or two, you're going to need a big towable chipper, not the Fargo kind.
posted by beagle at 5:48 AM on September 1, 2013

Response by poster: I'd say about 80% of the branches / vines are less thick than 2in. We're resigned to sawing and bundling / bagging the stuff that's too large for the wood chipper.

Heh, just googled "Fargo wood chipper," expecting to find some specific brand of popular wood chipper. Yes, I think the size of the wood chipper from Fargo is about the size we're looking for :b
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 5:58 AM on September 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

I wonder if someone at the NYBG might have an answer for you...
posted by blaneyphoto at 6:36 AM on September 1, 2013

As I understand it (my folks have a small chipper, you'd need more than a little walk home unit), the longer you wait to chip the branches instead of doing it right away, the more dangerous it is to chip them up as they've dried out. I read this discussion on chiippers a while back trying to find a chipper, but ended up not getting or borrowing one, just adding them to our municipal mulch stream (I'm in Florida, it's a county wide thing).
posted by tilde at 6:43 AM on September 1, 2013

At the two places I've worked in large gardens in the Bronx/Yonkers, we've either had a deal with a nursery to take our brush away or had enough woods to just make a really big pile of brush and leave it there.

My experience with smaller stuff and a wood chipper is that unless you have a good wood chipper, ie the big one you see with arborists, you're not going to be able to get the stuff you have to run through the chipper without chaos ensuing.

Check if the city has a program for collecting brush. 311 is your friend here.

NYC Yard waste information might give you a few ideas.
posted by sciencegeek at 6:47 AM on September 1, 2013

Home Depot's not a bad choice. You can rent a small truck for very cheap if you get it back to them within 75 minutes. It might be easier all around to catch a landscaper or day laborers while they're in the neighborhood. If you decide to forego chipping, NYC has pretty explicit rules about having the debris bundled up to no more than a certain thickness, and you're only allowed so many bundles at a time, but I've put out lots more and the Sanitation guys in Riverdale took them without complaint.
posted by Neeuq Nus at 6:53 AM on September 1, 2013

Response by poster:

As I understand it (my folks have a small chipper, you'd need more than a little walk home unit), the longer you wait to chip the branches instead of doing it right away, the more dangerous it is to chip them up as they've dried out.

...

My experience with smaller stuff and a wood chipper is that unless you have a good wood chipper, ie the big one you see with arborists, you're not going to be able to get the stuff you have to run through the chipper without chaos ensuing.

Very good to know. The pile is made up of some recently cut branches + random branches from about 15 years (!) of backyard dereliction, so there's sure to be a massive amount of long-dead wood. One of my worries w/r/t renting a woodchipper was that we'd cheap out, get a chipper that couldn't handle the load, damage it, and end up being on the hook. That, plus the possibility of chipping-chaos ensuing, makes me think that we should start looking at non-chipper solutions.

To be clear, turning the wood into mulch / woodchips isn't the primary goal; we just thought that it'd be a nice added bonus to taking care of this pile. Really, all we want is to get rid of this massive pile that's taking up 1/3 of this backyard!

Sciencegeek/Neeuq Nus, we'll look into any NYC city programs for brush removal (and Sciencegeek, I'm curious what calling a nursery entailed). In the last three months, we've probably set out around ~100 bags of leaves, branches, vines, etc., with nary a problem with DoS picking it up. It's beginning to sound like our best bet might be just to suck it up, get a ton of heavy-duty leave bags, and start filling them. We can set aside the branches too big for bags either for bundling later or just to put in the backyard corner.

Thank you so much for the help!
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 8:21 AM on September 1, 2013

Response by poster: And to piggypack on all of that, perhaps we should be looking into tree/branch/brush removal services, where I assume they send someone over w/ a flatbed truck or something and just start loading all the wood into the back? Does such a thing exist?
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 8:24 AM on September 1, 2013

Response by poster: * It should also be noted that the Bronx is exempt from a bunch of the special wood removal rules that stemmed from the Asian Long Horned Beetle panic, unlike Brooklyn/Queens/(and until recently)Manhattan.
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 8:28 AM on September 1, 2013

I don't know exactly what the arrangement was but one of the guys I worked with loaded up a huge dump truck and brought it to them every couple of months. I think they paid for this, but I don't know how much.

Another thing to note is that after a big storm when a lot of trees get damaged, the arborists will give you free wood chips just to get rid of them. Again, this may be something that only happens when you have a contract with a tree company and they're in the neighborhood and they like you and know you have space for another pile of wood chips. Right after the hurricane there were a lot of free woodchips around. But if you see someone working in your neighborhood, it can't hurt to ask.
posted by sciencegeek at 8:41 AM on September 1, 2013

If you have a use for woodchips, it's a do-able project. some friends had a woodchipper to make lots of mulch. In the early stages of decomposition, the wood removes nitrogen from the soil, and gives it back later. Woodchipping is a time-intensive way to get rid of your brush, and if there's tree work in your area, you can get woodchips free, so not a project I'd take on unless getting rid of brush is difficult. If you use the woodchipper, be insanely cautious, not only keeping fingers away from the chipper, but protecting eyes from flying bits.
posted by theora55 at 8:46 AM on September 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Great, I think all of this input has pointed me in the right direction: find a branch/brush removal service rather than go through the laborious process of trying to mulch all of this ish. I'll do some searches online / talk to neighbors / pick some landscapers' brains when I see them on the block. My hunch is that this will be both cheaper and easier than going through the woodchipper/mulching process, too, so win-win!

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 9:18 AM on September 1, 2013

Also ask at community gardens if you have any nearby. One near me did a lot of storm cleanup, and they also do Christmas trees, so if there's one near you that's looking to chip some of their own wood, maybe you can coordinate schedules and split the cost.
posted by mgar at 12:01 PM on September 1, 2013