The curse of the sweet gum tree

One of the awesome trees in my backyard is a native sweet gum tree, but there is nothing sweet about the sweet gum balls!  Every year my lovely tree produces thousands of prickly balls that make walking across the yard barefooted like navigating a minefield.  Those prickles are sharp!!

The only solution is to rake them up each spring.  Then of course, is the dilemma of what to do with all those balls.  I don't want to bag them to add to our landfill, but neither do I want them in my compost pile.  If I lived in the country I might be tempted to make a big bonfire but I live in town so that is not an option for me.

I have come up with two good uses for sweet gum balls.  They work very well as the drainage material in the bottom of container plants.   I pile a few inches of sweet gum balls in the bottom of a container before adding soil.   I think they work better than rocks or packing peanuts because they are completely organic and compost themselves in time for the following year's containers.

Sweet gum balls also make great mulch for those awkward places where I do not go, but also don't want weeds to grow.  For me, that is under my two decks.  I can pile sweet gum balls 5-6 inches deep and even the toughest weeds give up and die.  I would like to think the the prickly balls also deter critters from taking up residence under there as well.

This year's sweet gum ball harvest netted me five large baskets of sweet gum balls.  Even though I'm extremely diligent, I do miss a few so if you hear a distressed yelp from my backyard, you will know that I just found another sweet gum ball.