?? "Off-label Appliance Use in Your Garden?

 


    I use a thrift-store blade type coffee grinder to reduce alfalfa
pellets to meal. When I find one comparably priced, I'll probably adopt
a human-powered coffee or grain mill for the task.
    In the garden today, while cutting up "greens" trimmings with a
pocket knife, it occurred to me that a thrift-store food processor might
serve to more quickly homogenize tender garden trimmings. It's an idea
on which I intend to follow up, unless someone here has had a negative
experience doing so. If I were to buy a major (to me) power gardening
tool, it would be one of those debris shredder jobbies but that's 'way
overkill for most of my composting needs.
    Does anyone have reliable gardening applications for other types of
household appliances not meant for the garden?
--
TIA,
the Balvenieman
Running on single malt in U.S.A.
USDA zone 9b

 



What a waste of time.

Buy alfalfa meal to start with.

Charlie

 

balvenieman@invalid.net says...


A good, 6 horsepower, self-propelled lawnmower can shred a lot of debris
and pick it up too.

 




    Yes, but then someone here would have to mow! LOL! We don't do that
much: As a rule, at least twice but sometimes as many as four times per
year, depending on rainfall. I occasionally use a little walk-behind
mower in the most-used pathways but for most of the season use a
human-powered swinging thingie to knock off the seed tops and keep the
grass to a non-tickling level.
    Many years ago, I converted one of those "Snapper" high-vacuum
mowers into a stationary light-duty shredder/mulcher. It worked well but
finally bit the dust—holes abraded through the alloy mower bed. If I
were to replace it today, I'd just geek for a specialized tool.
    I don't usurp any of the native vegetative "waste" for the garden.
Our preference here is to leave it in place, whenever practicable. A
large part of the cumulus does get chopped up, whenever one of us mows,
to speed de-constitution but large obstructive objects—yesterday's sand
pine deadfall, for example—get moved to a less intrusive location.
Intervention only hastens the inevitable desertification but sometimes
seems necessary.
--
the Balvenieman
Running on single malt in U.S.A.
Peninsular Florida,
USDA zone 9b

 

balvenieman@invalid.net says...

I hear you. We don't mow much... and we have official permission from
London Ontario to leave much of our lot to fend as naturally as anyghing
in the city can fend. --Now that we owe the bank for it, we'll be
turning much more of it over to food and selling off our extra seedlings
as the spring comes on.

Our primary use for the mower is in the spring and fall. Norway maple
leaves can be a pain in compost if you don't chop them up.

...And we have to keep the city's part of the hill mowed to keep the
city from doing it wrong and a nearby neighbour from scalping it to
nothing.


There is something to be said for leaving well enough alone.


What's happening there?