Well I have had the Which Best buy for 5 yrs (Champion Electric from Do it
all £130 ) and other than needing to get the blades changed once a year it
handles almost everything i can throw in it from my nearly 1/3rd acre of
shrubs, perenials ,fruit bushes and apple and pear trees
Its best to shred stuff as you prune it as if its left to dry out its harder
and sometimes i run the shredded stuff through again to get it really fine
I have 7 huge compost bins constantly full with grass, shreddings,
cardboard, shredded newspaper ( but not with the garden shredder ) and if i
can get it horse manure .....plus buckets of you know what ....in about 1
year i have super compost

However today I would probably spend the extra and buy the biggest BOSCH
quiet shredder they make
It all really depends on the size of your garden

"Daddy" junk wrote in message
...

"Kay Easton" wrote in message
...
In article , Daddy
junk@?.? writes
Rather than letting the local council take away all my cuttings /
prunings
etc. and then buying the same stuff back from them ready made into
compost,
I have decided that it is time to invest in a shredder and make more
use
of
the two compost bins I have.

However, I am slightly worried after finding one or two reviews which
warned
about some shredders not being up to the job (branches jamming at half
the
maximum
diameter, smaller stuff falling through and having to be fished out
again,
greenery
& weeds jamming the shredder etc.).

The majority of my stuff will be small(ish) prunings and leafy material
(including weeds etc.) with the odd larger pruning up to 30mm

I wouldn't try shredding weeds, just put them straight on the compost
heap. You'll have problems with the 30mm stuff, but up to half an inch
should be fine, and worth doing, because this stuff is a pest in the
compost heap.

Probably most weeds will go straight on. Was thinking more of the soft
'delicate' looking plants that look like they will rot OK when when they
go
in - but they come out looking like tumbleweed, binding the whole heap
together and a real handling problem - I really need to chop everything
up.

I was assuming that shredders would reduce pretty much anything to such a
size which would rot along with everything else, or maybe I'm a being
optimstic? Is anything woody over half an inch not going to shred small
enough to rot?


It takes about as long to shred a load as it does to prune it in the
first place - be aware of this extra workload!

I was assuming that stuffing the stuff into a shredder would be no worse
that stuffing into green sacks? I'm OK with this. I really just want to
recycle as much as possible from my garden back into my garden rather than
throwing away (in reality most of my prunings are either conifer, rose or
mixed deciduous hedging (hawthorn-ish)


I'm looking to spend up to about £250 but it must reliably be able to
shred
anything from a leaf up to a 30mm diameter branch without without
jamming
and without the stuff just dropping through. Does not necessarily
have
to
be one of the quiet models.

Quiet is a relative term as far as shredders are concerned. For your own
sake as well as that of people 6 houses away, consider a quiet model!

No problem - 'quiet' models appear to be more expensive but I've no
problem
with that if they are also better quality to go wit it.
I just want to buy one but am paranoid it is not going to do the job I'm
expecting and I will end up regretting. So which model is it to be?




--
Kay Easton

Edward's earthworm page:
http://www.scarboro.demon.co.uk/edward/index.htm