Pacific Northwest Gardening: Weed Wrench for ivy?, 3 by LakeLivingRos

LakeLivingRos wrote:
I composted the cedar shingles and branches, but never composted the ivy into that for my garden. I would shred the ivy into compost material to make it more condensed to load it. I would compost the ivy in the area that I was removing it, and then shovel it into a pile. I did this especially for where the ivy had taken over a few trees that we cut down. So I made sure that a larger branch went in with the ivy to help prevent a clog of the shredder. This made it much much easier to transport. I was able to find a picture of the wood chipper I used pic #1 , pic #2 & #3 in the background are the initial piles I would make (they would get about 4-5ft tall), pic #4 & 5 is all I could find to show you the set-up we had (before we sold the truck, after that like I said we just had to use the trailer and our subaru). We bought some cheap very large tarps from costco to help contain it, especially since it was seriously raining and bad weather most of the time (which adds weight). I was not too concerned with the "ivy compost" since I was doing it in an area that was largely "infected" with ivy, and every day I would make sure to clean up EVERYTHING.

But like I said, the compost I used for my yard was cedar shingles, and wood from a cabin we took down. We took down a few trees, but all of that people wanted for firewood. There was a few hedges and such that I composted, but it was used mostly as filler for areas that were eroding. We had to bring in a lot of dirt to fill those areas in the end because any usable compost was just not enough (which is surprising because you will have piles and piles many feet high, but the wood chipper breaks it all down to a garbage bag full it seems! Sorry if I didn't make it clear about the wood chipper! Hopefully the pictures help out a little more!