duluthga

In another month or so the annual 'preparing the plants for Winter' ritual will begin, always a sad time. My preference here in NE Atlanta is to cut at ground level and heavily mulch with pine straw.

Many of us face the same problem in what to do with the tremendous amount of cut material. Rather than haul to the landfill taking many trips I'd like to try composting most of it.

Have any of you come across a method of shredding this material to reduce the size of the pile and to speed the decay process? I would like to rent a small branch chipper but it seems the debris is much too moist for that to work.

Merely spending countless hours manually chopping it with a machete doesn't seem like a fun way to spend an afternoon, any tips will be appreciated!

JP

Get yourself some nice red composting worms. They'll do the job and give you a very nice compost.

JCA433

I cut the banana plants into thin slices with a tree saw and then cut the slices into quarters before composting. Here in south Florida banana plants do not freeze most years. The banana stems are cut down only after harvesting the bunch.

siege2050

The leaves sure dont decompose very well if mulched fresh, probably need to mix them with some dry carbony matter like dead leaves from deciduous trees. Believe it or not, some were still green here at the bottom of the pile after winter was over.

__________________

Kat2

I haven't cut more than a few leaves thus far and they break down quickly here. However, when I lived in MD and OH I found that burying compostables in the my non mulched garden worked very well. Bonus? Sometime I got some neat volunteers if I didn't bury stuff deeply enough. Lots of tomatoes and peppers. Too bad banana scraps won't reward you with new plants.

__________________

Worm_Farmer

Get some kids to jump on them. Its quicker than cutting them up and you will be left with a pile of pulp. I use the leaves as top cover.

JP

You could make curry out of it's tender part...

siege2050