Wood chipper recommend?

[TomIn]

Also, unless it's hardwood, wood chips as garden mulch rob nitrogen from the plants, because they burn up as they break down. We only ever used hardwood chips, but mostly well composted pine-bark mulch from the forestry operations up in Northern Ontario.

I have always heard and observed that any wood will "pull the nitrogen from the soil" as it decays. With that said, we used vast amounts of shredded hardwood leaves as mulch and soil conditioner for three decades when we had a city home on a small lot with lots of trees.

My biggest concern about using wood chips on a garden is the chance that they may contain Black Walnut wood. Black walnut wood contains juglone which is a natural herbicide that will stunt or kill nightshade plants. Black Walnut trees are fairly common along rural roads in SW Indiana where our rural property is located. One year we got a load for wood chips from a utility tree trimming service and used the chips to make paths in the garden and the (later) composted chips for soil improvement. Now all we can grow are miniature spindly tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

 

[johnnmr]

We bought a like new Bearcat SC5540B that we like a lot. It's a pto model for up to 50 hp. I wanted "cheap" but when we tried 1 with a 5 hp engine it was just pitiful.

When the knives are sharp the Bearcat will self feed, when they're dull the chipper plain doesn't work.

This particular model has a chute and blower, at the time I wouldn't have paid extra for those. Knowing what I do now a blower and chute would be mandatory.

Shop around on marketplace, Craigslist, or a Big Iron kind of site, there's lots (or at least there were) of bigger low hour machines for reasonable prices.