Group blog items by year -> redirect and appearance question

I implemented a blog, and since the list of blog posts will get enormous, i would like to atleast group the blog items by year in a folder:
/blog/2017/ <--- lots of blog items in here
/blog/2018/ <--- lots of blog items in here
/blog/2019/ <--- lots of blog items in here

The problem is, that once i put the blog items in a Folder, the blog items located for example in /blog/2018 won't show up in /blog. Only the Folders which shouldn't show up are rendered in the blog:
Blog item list on /blog/ page:
2017
2018
2019

So how can i get grav to show the items located inside the folder 2017,2018,2019, but not the folders themselves?

Kind regards,

Smash

The simplest way is to not build your blog collection via @self.children and use @self. descendantsor @taxonomy.tag - read the collection docs for more info

@rhukster with your recomendation the example is possible but following that configuration there will be posts called 2017, 2018, 2019, etc.
Is it possible to hide the 2017, 2018 and 2019 pages from home page? (but not the 2017 or 2018 or 2019 children pages?)

Maybe it's possible by using '@page.children': '/blog/2017' and so on. Haven't tried it yet. Will report back.

Perhaps it's even possible to use a wildcard here... '@page.children': ‘/blog/* --> Off to test it out

This does work:
content:
items:

• '@page.descendants': /blog/2017
• '@page.descendants': /blog/2018
  What doesn't work is using a wildcard

Thank you for your input, rhukster!
And thank you barbanet for pointing out that using @self.descendants doesn't hide the folders.

Also you can set published false in those year pages.

@Smash,

How are you adding two items to the same content?
I've tried changing the md file and using the admin but it seems not possible with a vanilla installation.

Also, using folders I've found tags are using the folder in the url (well, all my tags has stopped to work but maybe was me)

There's another issue (?) with this approach. Using Grav as blog with folders to group posts your pagination will work only with posts inside that folder.

Also you can set published false in those year pages
Thats the first thing i tried. if i remember correctly that resulted in the subpages not being published by default, or not at all
How are you adding two items to the same content? I've tried changing the md file and using the admin but it seems not possible with a vanilla installation.
I also couldn't get it to work via the admin panel, more precisely, using the admin panel, only one item could be added, and only if the statement was written in one line (Complete file content follows):

YAMLCopy

title: Blog
content:
items:
- '@page.descendants': /blog/2017
- '@page.descendants': /blog/2018
limit: 5
order:
by: date
dir: desc
pagination: true
url_taxonomy_filters: true

Also, using folders I've found tags are using the folder in the url (well, all my tags has stopped to work but maybe was me)
Can you elaborate in more detail? how are the tags (taxonomy?) using the folder?
There's another issue (?) with this approach. Using Grav as blog with folders to group posts your pagination will work only with posts inside that folder.
Do you mean the pages inside blog/ folder don't show anymore?