wet verses dry - chipping christmas trees

[Jen57]

wet verses dry - when do we chip christmas trees - when green, or wait till needles drop?

We are a brand new community composting scheme, and our first task is taking the communities christmas trees.  I  googled for advice on whether we need to chip the christmas trees immediately, or whether to stack them until the needles drop and then do it BUT I am getting confusing stuff back, with 50% saying chip immediately and 50% saying wait till wood is dry.  HELP please!

 

Advice on what chipper / shredder to hire would also be really helpful. 

 

We are a bunch of amateur volunteers, and this is our very first task - so we really wanna get it right!   Thanks.

[Stubby]

23 minutes ago, Jen57 said:

wet verses dry - when do we chip christmas trees - when green, or wait till needles drop?

We are a brand new community composting scheme, and our first task is taking the communities christmas trees.  I  googled for advice on whether we need to chip the christmas trees immediately, or whether to stack them until the needles drop and then do it BUT I am getting confusing stuff back, with 50% saying chip immediately and 50% saying wait till wood is dry.  HELP please!

 

Advice on what chipper / shredder to hire would also be really helpful. 

 

We are a bunch of amateur volunteers, and this is our very first task - so we really wanna get it right!   Thanks.

When you feel like it I would say .

[GarethM]

Or sweet talk a local tree guy for a bit of free publicity.

 

A few council parks departments used to do it for the scouts, a fiver a tree or something like that and the usual local paper wrote an article or two.

[Stere]

Depends compost needs the right greens to brown ratio to work best but it doesn't really matter as I assume Xmas trees will only be a small % of the total compost?

 

 

Quote

The bacteria and micro-organisms that produce the compost work best when the balance of green and brown materials is correct. As a rough guide:

• 25–50 per cent should be soft leafy green material  

• the other 75–50 per cent should be chopped-up woody, brown material 

Avoid letting any one material dominate – especially grass clippings, as these can become a slimy, smelly mess on their own. Grass clippings are best mixed with brown material when you add them to the bin. If you don’t have enough, pile the clippings up beside the bin until you have sufficient brown material to make a balanced mix.

 

https://www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/composting

 

 

 

As for chipper some thing   15HP Greenmech CS100 any smaller ones will be  useless most likely

 

 

Depends how many trees etc?

 

 

 

Watch out for the idiots or idgaf's who will fill there bins with plastic  as the local  council compost which they give out for free is full of it.

 

[Dan Maynard]

Stacking and unstacking Christmas trees sounds a right ball ache to me, I'd chip as you get them in.

 

As above, got to find the right tree surgeon but ring round is free and you'll find someone who likes to do a bit for charity at Christmas....

[woody paul]

15 minutes ago, Dan Maynard said:

As above, got to find the right tree surgeon

Need to find one with large capacity chipper so just check for any metal and chuck them in. 

[Shaunpaul]

1 hour ago, Jen57 said:

wet verses dry - when do we chip christmas trees - when green, or wait till needles drop?

We are a brand new community composting scheme, and our first task is taking the communities christmas trees.  I  googled for advice on whether we need to chip the christmas trees immediately, or whether to stack them until the needles drop and then do it BUT I am getting confusing stuff back, with 50% saying chip immediately and 50% saying wait till wood is dry.  HELP please!

 

Advice on what chipper / shredder to hire would also be really helpful. 

 

We are a bunch of amateur volunteers, and this is our very first task - so we really wanna get it right!   Thanks.

Maybe put your location on and someone may offer to help (local tree surgeon) also think about letting them tip off chip throughout the year and add yourself to the local tip site directory on this site.

[spudulike]

Chip them up as they come and then bag the chippings to put on the flowerbeds as it is unlikely to compost down and with the dry periods we get in the summer, the chip keeps in the moisture.

Perhaps chip, bag and sell back or take donations is the way forward.

As someone else said -get a local paper and arb company involved and make a splash - all proceeds to a good cause will move it forward.

[Steven P]

We did this with our Scouts couple of ££ for drop off, a couple more to collect - the village didn't have a council collection, a couple of years at £100 a weekend for the group... and then the council jumped in and did it for free (supply and demand I guess, we showed there was a demand?)

 

The Scouts dismantled the trees and they got burnt - having a chipper would have been a good idea though. If possible get one 'donated' by a local tree surgeon. We did ours in a day and so having a van + logos and chipper parked up on a Saturday would have worked well.

 

As for when - depends how much space you have, which might be the decider, they take up a fair bit of space whole

[s o c]

A friend of mine takes Christmas trees in aid of local hospice.

Its usually April or so by the time I get to chip them, I think this year it was later .

they do take up a lot of space and take a long time to wilt (in west of Ireland climate anyway)

if you stack them the bottom ones will stay wet.

Chipped about 350 in an hour and a half this year with 12 inch pto chipper. Anything smaller than 8 inch chipper will struggle to pull them in.

you need to watch out for screws in the butts.

[Stere]

The council used to take them to make dead hedges to stabilize sand  dunes  then deciced  mobile dunes were a better rare  habitat  so stopped.