Some people fill 12 or more green bins in a year with the twigs and branches that fall in their yard. If you are someone with very few twigs in your yard, I would totally understand if you want to just skip ahead to the next chapter.

I am mystified by people who put their twigs on the curb or rent an obnoxious, loud, petroleum-powered, smelly (not to mention dangerous) chipper. Keep those branches, twigs, rotten logs, and Christmas trees!¹ That stuff is gardener’s gold! Here is a quick list of twenty things that can be done with that wood, keeping it on your property, and not having to fool with a wood-eating, fire-breathing monster named “Chipper”:²

1. Make your own mulch. A huge branch can be reduced to flat mulch in about one minute with a pruner. I usually clip at the bends in the twigs and branches – every foot or so. A huge pile of branches and twigs will become about 30 times smaller in 15 minutes. Using that branch as mulch helps to work the organic matter into the soil before it goes up into the atmosphere.

2. Cover it in soil to make hugelkultur beds.³ This is best with the logs (green logs work too) and thick branches. This is an excellent use for a stump – no need to pull it or grind it, just cover it with soil.

3. In Finland, they use small branches and twigs between muddy spots and the house. You can make a muddy spot less muddy, or you can create a place near the house to wipe your feet.⁴ When the twigs decompose in the spring, it feeds the soil.

4. Put the wood in a dry place⁵ for a while and then use it for firewood. With a rocket mass heater,⁶ a rocket cook stove,⁷ or a rocket oven,⁸ the trimmings from a small yard may meet all of your fuel needs for the rest of your life.

5. Create butterfly, bird, and other wildlife habitats by making a brush pile. Many gardeners report a dramatic reduction in pest problems by adding a few brush piles near their gardens.⁹ Without the brush piles it looks tidier, but then you must do the work that nature would have done for you.

6. With a bit of jute, it’s a snap to make a twig trellis or arbor for your garden.¹⁰ Usually, in about ten minutes. And, when they get old, you can mulch the branches and the jute together.

7. Make a junk pole fence¹¹ – this could be the difference between raising a garden for your family and feeding the local deer.

8. If you have some woodshop skills, you can make chairs,¹² furniture,¹³ name tags, coasters, bird houses,¹⁴ benches,¹⁵ planter boxes, tool handles,¹⁶ coat racks,¹⁷ and much, much more. If the wood is fresh black locust wood,¹⁸ whatever you do with it will last about ten times longer outdoors than cedar without adding a drop of paint or stain.

9. Make garden stakes.

10. Throwing branches and logs into ponds will usually reduce algae problems and give fish and amphibians a place to hide from predators.

11. Make roasting sticks for marshmallows, hotdogs, and the like!

12. Make tomato cages.

13. Build a chinampa¹⁹ – the most fertile growing system ever developed (that we know of) – which is simply a pile of brush put into the water at the edge of a pond. Eventually the brush gets compacted enough that you can add some soil.

14. Innoculate logs to grow mushrooms.

15. Smoke foods if you have the right species of twigs.²⁰

16. Make deer deterrent.²¹

17. Make wattle fencing.²²

18. If the sticks are bigger than you want, let some goats and hogs have them for a week – they will get smaller quickly.

19. Mill lumber.²³ Yes, this requires a lot of big logs.

20. Build all sorts of structures from poles and logs.²⁴

This list is not exhaustive. There are lots of other cool things you can do with sticks and branches. This is just one more example of how, when we spend more than five seconds to solve a problem, all sorts of neat ideas pop up.²⁵ In addition, most of the time one pound of tree works out to be pretty close to one pound of carbon dioxide.²⁶ With some of these techniques you are effectively sequestering your own carbon! It would be yet another step toward your own personal carbon neutrality.

If you live on acreage, we can triple this list, as a person can develop a powerful symbiotic relationship with a woodland.²⁷