Lee Harps

Tonight, with the wind blowing and the temperatures dropping, it becomes most apparent that gardening, as we know it, will soon come to its end for the season and the winter will bring with it indoor activities so sorely ignored because of the garden’s perpetual requirements.

As the wind blew some of my wife’s scarves, it reminded me of a scene one might see in the movies.

Nearby, one of our many squirrels was enjoying a feast on the new bird feeder.

We have not yet experienced frost, so the insects continue to thrive, working until the very end of the season laying away necter for a long winter. Here are a couple of the local bees hard at work.

The veggies in the garden are still producing a bit. I had lost all my zucchini to the borers some time ago, but was surprised to find a small side shoot alive and well as I walked thru the garden this week. The fruit on it is small, but with a few additional warm days, it would have promise.

This tomato plant is looking a bit worse for wear, but even so, I was able to pick quite a few very nice tomatoes from it.

The sweet peppers, while less in numbers, are still producing quite nicely.

I had mentioned my “cole crop” late plantings in an earlier posting. It was quite warm mid-week, and to my chagrin, the white cabbage butterflies were having a heyday! I decided it wise to apply the bacterial remedy for them, bacillis thuringensis, which organically gives cabbage worms a fatal tummy ache. This is a liquid mixed into water and applied to the leaves via a sprinkling can.

The row is looking pretty healthy.

On closer examination, some very nice heads of broccoli are developing.

We had a particularly nice return from the cantaloupe seeds I had “recycled” from an early season cantaloupe we had purchased to eat.

Like the “perfect” gardener, I was able to wash and dry more seeds for next summer; so much less expensive than buying seed.

Here’s an unusual caterpiller story. Several weeks ago, my Martha Stewart wife brought into the kitchen a bouquet of lovely dill blooms which she arranged artistically in a lovely little pitcher of water and placed it visually and strategically near the kitchen sink, mostly “for pretty”, as the Pa. Dutch would say it. Soon thereafter, we noticed that the dill was inhabited and being consumed – by a very lovely little caterpiller.

Isn’t this nice, thought we?! As with all beings that eat, what goes in must come out. Tiny though it was, Mr. Caterpiller didn’t have the greatest toilet habits and began to leave a most unpleasant residue of black pellets around the pitcher. After a short time of tolerating this, Mrs. Stewart decided that Mr. Caterpiller should spend the rest of his development on the deck.

Unfortunately, this story does not have a very happy ending (or so it seems). Yesterday, in the process of renewing the dill leaves for his diet, I was able to get a rather nice photo of him.

By evening yesterday, much to our dismay, Mr. Caterpiller was GONE! My guess is that one of our many birds happened to see this lovely dish and had a feast. SO, it was fun while it lasted.

It is surely fall, most of the final tomatoes have been picked.

and the annual decorative gourd collection seems to have appeared on the deck once again.

It’s a wonderful time of the year.

DISCLAIMER: Unless you are in the market for an electric shredder, you may want to skip this article. This is a consumer’s review that I wish I had been able for me to review PRIOR to having purchased the item above.

As I gazed upon the very haphazard, unsightly bits of cornstalks still partially standing in my garden, their numbers having been reduced by our neighbor’s annual “decorate the porch for Halloween” harvesting, I began looking for ways an older person might deal with the brown, bedraggled cornstalks that remained. Gasoline powered chippers and shredders are quite expensive and also unpleasantly noisey! As with so many things, my quest led me to an Internet search and I came upon the McCulloch Electric Chipper/Shredder shown above. There are a few reviews out there from which I learned: 1) the assembly instructions are “marginal at best”, 2) when attempting to shred wet material it tends to become stopped up and needs to be disassembled for cleaning, and 3) removal of the hopper for cleaning out the unit can be a bit tedious.
Perhaps I am not as mechanically challenged as some, but I found the assembly to be fairly straightforward with one minor exception. If you look at the way the tubular “legs” meet the body of the unit, you will see that they come in at an angle.

The bolts and bolt holes, on the other hand, must be inserted thru straight holes.

Getting the only-long-enough bolts and lock washers started on the first side were really easy. Doing so on the other side with the legs angled was another story. After some determination, the legs were finally firmly attached. (Advice: Only START the nuts on the first side, then START the nuts on the other side, THEN tighten them up.)
I think the greatest surprise for me was the feeding chute at the top. On all the photos, it appears to be a rather large funnel into which one simply dumps the leaves and debris, leaving the work to the machine. Look again:

What it has is a VERY small, VERTICAL opening, probably 1.5 x 5 inches in size above which is an oval opening with a self-closing flap. NOTHING is going to enter the chopping chamber on its own; one must PUSH any material into the chopper! This is made somewhat easier by an item that is included with the unit: a plastic PUSHER.

Using both hands, one can work (emphasis on “work”) the material into the chamber. Once in the chamber, the revolving blades do their thing (shown here with the hopper chamber removed).

Let me tell you about those blades: Those babies are SHARP!! On one of my first times having had to remove the hopper to clear away the jammed up debris, I casually cleared the material laying on the blade by sweeping it off with my bare hand. Bad decision! I am currently typing with a band aid on my 4th finger right hand because of it. I bleed well! It was THEN that I went for my gloves. I suppose a little blood letting isn’t all bad….

Here’s the story with hopper removal: There are three black, plastic knobs which hold the hopper in place. The one is located on the rear of the unit, just above the power switch.

This is probably the most important one, because under the threaded black metal gizmo projecting into the yellow hole is a safety switch. This switch is activated ONLY when the knob is screwed all the way in. The unit will not power up unless it is screwed all the way in.

There are two UNSWITCHED knobs, one on either side of the hopper, which stabilize the hopper, especially when one tilts the unit forward to roll it about on the wheels. Once assembly was completed, I could not, for the life of me, get these side knobs to screw into the holes provided for them. They are spring loaded and I discovered that a split lock-washer had been installed ABOVE the silver washer, thus preventing the bolts from extending far enough to reach the holes. I unscrewed knobs from their housing, removed the split washer (shown), reassembled them, and all was fine.

There is a discharge chute on the side of the shredder opposite the power switch. On it is a label stating clearly: NEVER PLACE HANDS INTO DISCHARGE CHUTE AS SERIOUS INJURY WILL OCCUR.

I’m sure I have voided any chances I have of getting the McCulloch folks to support me for the rest of my life, having admitted this, but I was soon to discover that, if instead of loosening THREE screws, cutting my finger on the sharp blades, and losing time reassembling the unit, if I simply turned off the power switch, reached up into the “DO NOT ENTER” chute (with GLOVED hand) and removed stuck debris, spinning the cutter wheel till it was clear, I could be back in operation in a fraction of the time required for disassembly.

One must remember, however, that even stopped, one is reaching into the sharp blades, so it is imperative that one proceeds with extreme caution. It made use of the unit SO much easier, however!

Just to give you a couple of more photos of the shredder, here is the big label attached to the hopper.

As you can see on the label, it has a 14 amp., 1600 watt motor that spins the blades. It should not be operated with a wimpy power cord.

Here is what the underside of the chute looks like when removed (sorry it was dirty from use when I took the photo):

It has nice wheels and wheel “hubcaps” which carry the McColloch name.

Here is the side chute for inserting branches. I only tried this on a few branches, but while not as aggressive nor as fast as would be a larger unit, I think it does okay.

Price? This unit lists at $320, a bit more than I was willing to pay. I found it now being offered on Amazon for a mere $199.99 — actually with Amazon being the agent for Target – it arrived from a Target warehouse near here. It’s a pretty substantial unit, weighing in at 87 pounds!
Is it worth $200? Probably not. It is a pretty McCulloch yellow, though, and I would really like to try it in the spring when I trim my fruit trees, just as an alternative to making bundles of my branches for the garbage folks. It really isn’t a workhorse and is more of a “toy for townies”, if you don’t mind my saying so. Being so vertical, it stores rather easily in my garden shed without taking up much space. Will I keep it? Probably so, but I was careful to keep the shipping box just in case….