No Need For A Lawn Mower: Shred Leaves With An Alternative From Home Depot

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With crisper air and cooler temperatures in the air, it's the time of year that many homeowners — perhaps yourself included — are trying to devise a place to deal with the deluge of leaves on their lawn. While your lawn mower can do a lot more than just cut grass, using it to chop up leaves isn't always the best idea. Instead, there's an alternative from Home Depot that eliminates the temptation to shred your leaves using a mower: the Sun Joe Shredder.

Retailing for $149.99, the Sun Joe Shredder is an electric leaf shredder that touts powerful performance when faced with your autumnal leaf fall. It has a 13-amp motor that delivers 8,000 revolutions per minute (rpm), meaning it can mulch as much as 55 gallons of leaves per minute. Because it is electric, all you need is access to an outlet (and possibly an extension cord) to start your leaf-reduction crusade. While your lawn mower treats wet and dry leaves in the same manner, there's a designated setting for each on the Sun Joe Shredder, ensuring the best performance for the job at hand. The product's specifications also say the shredder is easy to pair with a leaf bag to help collect the newly pulverized leaves.

At the time of writing, customers had given the Sun Joe Shredder a 4-star average rating from more than 540 reviews. One five-star review on Home Depot's website states, "It very quickly made a minced green blob of leafy matter just a fraction of the size of the pile it formerly was." Pair this tool with our 12 tips to make raking the leaves in your yard an easy job for the ultimate backyard optimization.

Buyers generally state that the Sun Joe Shredder works well at reducing the volume of leaves on their property, but there is a need for proper usage to prevent performance hiccups. Just as larger sticks in a leaf pile can overwork your mower's components, the same is true with the Sun Joe Shredder. One customer, for example, speaks to this care and usage tip, writing, "I try to keep the sticks and twigs out as they really eat up the shredder lines instantly." This means that while raking, you'll need to take the time to pull sticks out of the pile and physically move the branches to your disposal site.

Beyond shredding leaves, another customer says that they were able to mulch the pine straw that fell from their trees, turning it into good filling material for their garden beds. If you plan to shred autumn leaves — or pine straw — for use as garden bed mulch in the spring, it may be wise to put the leaves in a pop-up leaf bin that allows easy collection and relocation of the mulch. Gather your shredded material and add it to your compost. Once winter is over, the compost should show signs of decomposition, which will make it easier to mix into soil or add to your garden beds. If it has not broken down enough and you need to bulk up your mulch pile a bit, here are some of the best ingredients to use in your DIY mulch.