Kitchen Garden Forum

I'm thinking of buying a shredder to break up brassica stalks and small pruning. But.....will it clog up if the material is not dry. ?

Depends on the size and power of the shredder.

I once owned what was supposed to be a reasonably powerful shredder, regrettably I can't remember the model, but I consigned it to the tip some years ago because I got fed up with how slow it was. Didn't make a bad job of things like raspberry prunings and sometimes sweetcorn but brussels sprouts had to be split and were still difficult, they go to the bonfire now. I imagined I could shovel everything in and so make rapid compost but it was not to be. I think you need large petrol driven machines for that, the cost of which simply can't be justified.

To give an opposing view - I've had a couple of shredders, a cheaper one of the spinny disk sort that made a lot of noise then broke, followed by the replacement - a Bosch one of the sort with a slowly rotating cutting/crushing gear. This has lasted longer (except for a design fault; don't leave it with direct sun on the black panel covering the electronics - it will overheat, burn out and switch to running backwards - fortunately I'm rather handy with electronics). But it does do a better job; it is still fairly slow, but dryish straightish material kind of auto-feeds, it can cope with up to 35mm diameter, and the more crushed rather than cleanly chipped output hots up nicely in the compost heap. One year I collected a fair few Christmas trees from the street and shredded all that would go through; the rest went for firewood. Composted nicely.

The speed issue is not so bad if you think of the time spent cutting it all up small enough to bag up and take to the tip, and then going to buy the compost you didn't make ... Of course burning is quicker, but annoys the neighbours more IME.

I have Bosch as described above, I used a mix of cardboard and brassicas to help stop clogging up.