Sadly, most of the hollyhocks, larkspur, nasturtiums, and bachelor's button are well past their prime, so I've been removing them from the garden. Since we had good success this year with an "accidental garden" created by composting spent flower stalks in place, I decided to create a few more piles elsewhere in the yard. We bought this small chopper several years ago at Harbor Freight, intending to use it on yard waste so that we could recycle more of it as compost. It's rather finicky...it can't handle wood materials any thicker than finger-width sticks, and green material causes it to jam. It did an admirable job of grinding up hollyhock stalks which, by the way, should not be used in a vegetable garden in a semi-composted state.
My piles of deceased flowers were looking rather messy, so Mike suggested we use the chopper on them. One of the places I think I'd like to see hollyhocks and larkspur next year is in the space between our gazebo and the block wall. We took the chopper directly to an area where I had one of my piles, and fed flower stalks into it, letting it spit out the chopped material directly on the ground. It handled dried larkspur spikes almost as well as the hollyhocks, but had a little trouble with the bushier bachelor's button plants. Now we have a lovely mulch full of seeds that I hope will become flowers that I will write about next spring!
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