Turn Brown Leaves Into Nutritious Garden Mulch With A Clever Homemade Tool

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For those nurturing their green thumb, new garden terms and materials quickly become part of everyday conversation. Mulch is one of the big ones. You add this handy, relatively affordable material to your garden beds to enhance their aesthetic and preserve nutrients in the soil. The extra layer over your garden's soil prevents weeds from growing and prevents healthy topsoil from washing away. It maintains soil temperature, retains moisture, and so much more. If you already have the best ingredients to use in your DIY mulch — like hay, straw, aged sawdust, bark, fallen leaves, and prunings — prepare them using a clever tool made from a drill, a paint mixer, and a couple of cable ties.

Mulch is primarily made from shredded or ground organic or inorganic materials, though most people have the former rather than the latter at home. If you want to make your own mulch, you'll have to chop the fallen leaves or recently pruned stems by hand with a pair of shears — and who has time for that? Alternatively, you can MacGyver a tool that is powerful enough to chop everything into smaller pieces. To get started on this project, you'll need any ol' electric drill, a paint mixer drill attachment, a pack of heavy-duty cable ties, and a large, sturdy trash can. Ideally, opt for a sturdier paint mixer that's made from steel or metal, like this Husky Steel Spiral Mixer at Home Depot. A cheaper plastic version, like this Pixiss Multipurpose Bidirectional Paint Stirrer, should also work. Make sure the shank is compatible with your drill.

As you may have already worked out, you can craft this nifty mulch maker with items you may already have lying around your house. Prior to connecting the paint mixer attachment to your drill, attach three or four cable ties onto the head at even intervals. You're effectively turning it into a line trimmer. Once the cable ties are secured, grab an electric drill from your tool box. It will power your new tool, and can be corded or cordless. Click the paint mixer attachment with cable ties attached into the chuck of the drill, and voilà! Your leaf-condensing, mulch-making machine is complete.

As for what to use to make nutritious mulch, the easiest way is to gather fallen leaves from around your yard. The drill's speed, combined with the DIY line trimmer attachment — the paint mixer and cable tie combo — shreds the leaves or other organic materials, creating free mulch for your yard or garden. In fact, this tool works best on dried, crispy foliage — it's perfect for repurposing bags and bins of fallen leaves to give garden soil an extra boost. Put on some safety glasses, gloves, pants, and a long-sleeved shirt, then fill the trash can with leaves and lower your new tool into the top few inches of the pile. Turn on the drill and run it until the giant pile of leaves is condensed into a usable mulch that will protect your garden soil and help your plants thrive.