technique: garbage can + weedeater + leaves

My Saturday gardener tried out this idea with the leaves (mostly oak) he cleared out from beneath rhodies, spirea, and azaleas. We could see that it worked well for a few minutes, but the string kept breaking off. Gardener thought maybe it was because of the woody stems and small twigs distributed among the leaves. I recently pruned the spirea.

If any one of you uses this technique, can you tell me if you have to make sure you have a pure sample of leaves? There are almost always some fine woody stems and slender twigs in the leaves I collect.

String trimmers are not designed to cut any thing but soft cellulose. No woody products are cut the string is. The garbage can thing works best on dry leaves in the fall not wet things in the spring. when ever I prune I drag a wheeled garbage can and put the stems in it and out to the fire pit they go. Then I rake up or in my case vaccum up the leaves. this I always do in fall. The spring clean up goes into the compost pit.

I discovered this by accident. I have been clearing ivy from my backyard and my technique is to weedeater down to the bare vines of the ivy. Then I rake all the cut debris (with the flexible kind of rake) into a pile. I remove pine cones and big sticks as I cut and rake. I left the 'mounds' in place as I worked and was amazed a couple of weeks later to discover the sweetest compost you ever saw! Not the 'black gold' but a really fine, nicely decomposed compost.

Now I rake big piles of leaves and pine needles, toss the sticks and cones, and weedeater them. Yes, it does scatter and you'll need to rake it back together and weedeater a couple of times. But it works very nicely.

Good Idea sterhill. You southerners are fortunate for the compost speed we suffer all summer and then we get what we want.