"hodgesant" wrote in message
...

Just getting into gardening... our 130ft garden has been somewhat
neglected and we are now doing stuff too if.

To start we have had cut down about 200m sq of weeds and brambles from
the back end of our garden.

What use would this all be if I hired a shredder and had this as mulch?
Should I bag it up and take away or use on the rest of the garden?

Anything that has once been alive is useful in the garden that includes
weeds, sawdust, dead chooks, cotton shirts and old woollen pullovers.

The soil under brambles will probably be very productive (or it is in my
locality) as all those years of leaf litter enriches the soil.

Weeds, and especially ones like Dock, are also very useful alive or dead.
Dock and similar plants (such as much maligned Scotch thistle) are what I
call 'deep miners' as their roots go a long way down and they pull up and
use nutrients that more shallow rooted plants can't use. If you doubt my
word, dig up a dock or something like it and check out where the worms are.

I have appalling soil and when I first started my veg beds in land that had
only first been cleared of scrub in the 1960s and which had never, ever had
any pasture improvement done on it, there was not a worm to be seen. After
af ew years of my tender care, I had lots of weeds and initially despaired
but then I noticed that the only place where there were worms was right in
and aroudn the roots of the deep miners. I now encourage deep miners and
just lop the tops off them so they don't seed all over the place.

Compost the lot. And if you aren't up to compost turning, shove the lot in
a neglected corner and it will eventually all rot down anyway.

Or, if you are one of those gardeners who simply can't stand seeing any sort
of 'mess', have the lot taken away and buy and bring in bags of nutrients.