otherwise you can purchase leaf shredders from the hardware stores.

I recently read of using an old hand meat grinder to chew up leaves. I really like this idea as I prefer smaller compost pieces. I like smaller compost piles so I chip and chop away at everything.

With the chipper shredder, I have to lift everything that goes into the shredder and then move it again once its shredded. This is hard on my bulging discs. With the lawnmower, everything stays on the ground. And I use the power of the self-propelled mower to move the bag of shredded leaves around.

Maybe I'm silly, but I prefer to use leaves in my compost pile and/or garden and mulch my grass clippings in the lawn.

I simply blow or rake them on to a tarp and drag them to my compost pile. I will shred a few of them with my mower.

I sometimes empty bagged leaves in a layer about 6 inches deep and 15 feet wide and just keep backing over them. I can then blow the mulched leaves inward into a windrow for picking up.

What is the *smallest* chipper/shredder appliance that anyone has come across?

But anyway, since you may be averse to investing in one of these (though they are much cheaper than a mower) I must state you cannot expect to shred leaves using any kitchen appliance!! Forget it. I use an old blender to chop junk paper to make handmade paper and this winter also used it to chop some very dry leaves that I am adding to my paper mix and as well as a lot to mix into the bedding for my worm bins. It was not difficult, but believe me -- you cannot hope to chop enough leaves using that technique to be practical on a garden scale!

I just went for a walk in a nearby park yesterday. Along the back edge of the area, big piles of (unshredded) leaves had been dumped last fall. They still were leaves, but along the edge of the woods where leaves obviously had been dumped over a long period of time, the ground was pure black, soft spongy richness. In other words--"compost happens!" But it can take years...

Other suggestions: if you had goats or chickens, using lots of leaves in their pens as bedding (as we did when we had those critters) makes for the best compost materials imaginable come spring!

Or leaves spread on a driveway, if you could keep them there, and run over them regularly, might work...

Or do you live near a town that collects leaves and takes them to a composting facility? I compost for myself all the leaves from our one-acre yard of trees (chopped and picked up with a rider mower with a mulching blade) but still buy extra pure leaf compost each spring at our local composting facility. They also sell compost made from general yard waste, but for several reasons I much prefer the pure leaf compost. It is $16 a trailer load (one scoop from a big front-end loader, likely 1 cu. yard) and pretty much fills a 4' x 8' raised bed.

Best wishes.

The 'best' (i.e. easy way) is just to let someone else do it for you. There are people who have shredders, who don't use the leaves they shred! They just put them out by the curb! Too bad there aren't many folks like that. The one near me either passed away or moved.

If you shred them yourself, the chipper/shredder is less work then using a mower (in most cases). Shredders vary quite a bit as far how fine they shred the material. The finer the better. Good ones have screens of varying sizes to vary the output size.

The mower is the number three choice, except for periods of spring and fall, when the grass/leaf mix is just right for compost. A bagging mower may be better at collecting the material than a simple side discharge mower. But either will work.

I use clippers (like for cutting roses) or loppers (the tool for pruning branches, long handles and short curved blades) to shred. I pick up a handful of the material in my left hand, and holding one handle under my armpit and the other in my right hand, I cut about a couple inches at a time. Maybe three or four cuts per handful. For pieces of wood (like redwood bark or cut up tree limbs) you can split the individual pieces like little logs. Very slow work.

Generally I try to shred materials as I add them to my pile, but sometimes I'm hit with a lot of material at a time and want to let the composting process do the initial shred. So I add unshredded leaves, vines, sticks that are cut up enough that the pile can be turned, and manage the pile aggressively (the 14 day compost method, hot pile of layered green and brown, turn every 3 days, add water as needed).

Then I screen the compost, coarse and finer (i.e. I've got two screens). I put the fines on a pile to cure and put the intermediate back in the compost pile. The coarsest stuff can be shredded, or layered back on the compost pile with more green (I use alfalfa pellets). The idea is there is a lot less now to be shredded, maybe half as much. You could probably go a long way by just continuing to compost without extra shredding, my point here is that a lot of shredding is done by each pass through the compost pile.

This has hospital visit written all over it.

Another vote for mowing em

Speaking of large equipment, my four year old's eyes went wide when he saw me watching a video of a big commercial-grade chipper shredder that sucked up trees like they were cotton candy. "We should get one of those," he said, with feeling. Though he later expressed a preference for the really big ones with the grapple arms.

I am a big fan of leaf mold, but it takes time and space. I think your best bet might be to rent or borrow a mower a couple of times a year - spring and fall. In the spring, you shred whatever is at hand and add that to the compost. In the fall, when most people have the bulk of their leaves, shred with the mower and use them on top of the garden as a mulch. In spring, turn that in with a garden fork. In just a few years it will transform your soil, you'll love it.

Shredding, by the way, will reduce the volume a lot... 3:1 at least.