Garden Shredder

I'm sure we had this question just a few days ago and a Bosch was recommended. Scroll back and see if you can find the question - it had more information in the answer.

Bosch AXT 2200 HP . See answers from question on 9 Jan.

Speaking from experience and from North America, the Bear Cat chipper/shredders are very good. A subsidiary company of Echo. Do you have Echo over there?

Try and stay away from an electric shredder. They just don't have the power that the gas powered ones do. And if you are going to be shredding or chipping bigger stuff then you will need the power.

As a mechanic I would advise you to get one with a Honda motor. Definitely stay away from any tecumseh motor (they have gone out of business) and Honda is much better than Briggs and Stratton.

Try to make sure the one you get has blades that can be sharpened or replaced and are easily removable. This is a BIG thing. The blades will wear out long before the motor. Check on the availability and the price of replacement blades.

For general backyard use a 1 to 2" chipper/shredder should do you just fine. Any more than that is probably overkill.

Note on Rose prunings, no matter which shredder you buy whilst they will shred (extremely painful operation, putting them through) they retain their unpleasant spikiness and are not nice to walk on or work with. same applies to hawthorn, blackthorn and pyracantha too by the way.

Reading Owdboggy's reply I suggest you do what we do buy a good pair of leather heavy duty Farm fencing gloves, ideal, available from any Agricultural store.

Just looked at prices for petrol machines from 600 quid to 1,000. You wouod need to use them an awful lot to get value for that kind of expenditure and unless you have a huge garden with lots of material to shred you will not use it that often. With just under an acre of garden with lots of shrubs we use ours about 4 times a year.
Rose etc, go in the Council compost bin, it is less painful!

We have about 1/3 acre OB and I use my little gas powered chipper shredder a lot. Mind you, my rose prunings go in and I have a lot of roses (50 or more). I haven't really had a problem with the thorns. I wear leather gloves and once the canes have been through the works the thorns are all off the bits and chopped up. The bits then go straight onto the compost pile where I guess the thorns decay away.