I have a compost pile that is just wood chips and chicken manure. I bought a 3point chipper for my tractor just for this. My land is very sandy and not a lot of actual nutrient soil, and it’s acidic because it’s oak scrub land. If I turn every 2 weeks, I can compost the chips and manure down in just a few months, and boy does it make a nice fluffy tilth… the straight chicken manure really cooks the wood chips down and provides more than enough nitrogen to eat the chips away… then I mix this compost with regular compost and I’ve been building my fields and pastures back up this way…
Wood chip compost may take years to make but it's excellent quality and extremely fungal dominant. I use it in potting mixes and as a soil amendment for fruit trees with great results.
3 seasons ago I buried a large full bag of fresh wood chips with some general commercial compost in my large planter and I did not add manure or fertilizer or any other source of nitrogen. But I did add some worms that I found in my garden. The first year the flowers were not doing well. The second season it was okay for some flower species but not all, and now at the start of the third season everything that I have growing in there is growing magnificent. Lots of different flowers, pepper seeds germinated, different varieties of flower bulbs that I planted this year started to grow, and for a while even some mushrooms popped up. And I have not watered the planter for months, I only mildly sprayed the pepper seeds with a bottle spray when I put them in the planter. During the winter I turn the planter into a mini greenhouse. And some of the flowers survived the winter and now they look even better as when I bought them. And the planter smells as if you walk into a flower store.
@@kristofp72 To my opinion composted wood chips are the best source of nutrients that you can provide to your plants and trees. It takes some time to mature but after that the results speak for itself. Of course the local climate and nitrogen pollution are also a big factor. But the wood chips also store more water after they have matured, they provide surface area for the micro organisms, it is a source of food for the micro organisms, and it helps to regulate the soil temperature, and it makes the soil "breath" if you will, so that the beneficial micro organisms also get enough oxygen. Everywhere else where I applied wood chips and small twigs to the soil my plants are doing much much better. But it took at least a full season before I noticed some positive effects. This season I had mushrooms growing at various places where I applied the woody material several years ago. And now I finally have some success with planting flower bulbs.
That is bark and thought this might be better than I thought it would be. Awhile later I had a pile of about 2 yards sitting next to my driveway ready to be used when I cut a tendon in my hand that slowed down my yard work. One day as I walked by that pile of wood chips I noticed that some volunteer sweet potatoes had started growing on the wood chips. I just left them to it and we ended up harvesting some very nice and tasty red sweet potatoes from that pile if wood chips. I never put any soil or fertilizer on them, they seemed to be living off the fungus that was living off the wood chips. It was quite the surprise. Needless to say, I am very happy to use wood chips where ever I can. Enjoy watching your very informative videos, see you next time.
One thing about sawdust from the shop. Some MDFs and other manufactured sheet goods still contain formaldehyde and other contaminates. Yes, these contaminates do oxidize fairly quickly but still, not in my garden!
I get free woodchips. Mostly juniper and pine because of where I live. Most of the chips are less than 2 weeks old early in the year. They've NEVER caused a growth issue in my garden. Just subscribed.
I put down 10 inches of woodchips(swflorida hot humid wet) and let the grass gro up through it until it was the middle of my shins, enough to hold down the woodchips when I mowed. I continued to let my grass grow tall before I mowed it. By doing so I was releasing rushes of nitrogen and causing the bactrria to explode in population. At this point mycelia has grown across all the wood chips and the bacteria and mycelium are cohabitating symbiotically. Every rush of nitrogen invigorates the bacteria and causes an explosion in population and in Florida after 2 years those wood chips are soil. Rich soil.
We own a tree service business, so consequently produce a lot of wood woodchips which people often request. I personally have removed all wood chips from our gardens because of the fire hazard.
For years I used bagged Cedar Mulch to top dress my garden. It's great at preventing weeds. Then I received a free load of wood chips and was amazed at how helpful they are. They prevent weeds, look great as a mulch and only need to be topped up every 2 to 3 years. Much cheaper and more practical than buying cedar mulch. I top dress with them and I don't find they they sink into the soil. When I need to add more soil, I move the woods chips out of the way, apply soil/compoast and sweep the chips back into place. They sure cut out a lot of work!
I have been using woodchips and dried leaves a lot around the garden, because I have an abundance of both these resources. They make great mulch and are easy to remove and put back in place when weeding. When I started gardening, I first had to bring in a truckload of soil, because there was none to speak of, just lots of rocks mixed in with either clay or sand. So I did start my first patch with imported soil, but when I decided to expand the garden further I decided I just incorporated a lot of dried leaves into the clay and wait. After one year, the soil was much lighter, but still hard to weed or till. The leaves were s ill not fully broken down and as I expected, I could not harvest much from this area, just a few small potatoes - and lots of weeds, but I had low expectations and not much to lose but a few leftover seeds. In year two though, I ended up with a rich black soil. I can't wait to plant in this bed this year.
I compost stall waste from a friends horse charity. Coarse sawdust saturated with urine and plenty green horse manure will not compost itself. It will not absorb water without washing off the nitrogen. I get best results not turning and letting the clean outer wood make a crust. It seems to get oxygen without turning. Takes at least a year.
I use sawdust in my walkways where I don't want anything to grow. The fact that they pack down and don't admit water is a good thing. It also takes a long time to break down so I don't have to reapply. One of the few gripes I have about wood chips is that they break down so well and are so good at growing plants that I've found they are miserable in walkways, I'm constantly weeding them and having to apply a new layer.
I tilled too much wood chips into my garden and my crops were horrible. I had to wait another year for the nitrogen level to return to normal. I learned from that mistake.
Sounds like you may have seen our video about our mulch urinal. You are right about the rain washing it through, during the rainy season here we prepare it in our green house so the rain doesn’t get to it. It definitely works great for us and is so simple and free! Congratulations on 100k
“It boggles my mind where they get all this nonsense…” love that. Great informative video, sometimes you have to make a judgment call on whom to believe and you’re my man!
Many thanks for clarifying the woodchip issues. In Spring I have so much grass I do not have enough carbon sources for making compost, so I use sawdust and it seems to work well in this situation, but I do mix it in well with the grass and certainly don't have layers of sawdust.
I love woodchips.. They made an excellent bedding for my pigs and the pigs did a great job breaking the chips down into compost. I also use them in my deep litter chicken bedding. They are great under perennials and trees.. I do t like them in the annual gardens because they tend to get mixed in the soil during transplanting or weeding. Also note that woodchips attract certain wild animals such as birds, skunk, and raccoons. They love to dig thru the chips to eat grubs and other insects..
I add quite a lot of well shredded woody material to my compost bays but add the result to the surface only (I'm 'no till) & thus don't have an issue with it subsequently depleting my soil's nitrogen level. Heck, all the paths between my vegetable beds are the same shredded material & I add 2" a year to them & they're constantly breaking down, with plant roots only a couple of inches down from the freshly applied stuff.
Having experience with wood chips I found they will turn to a good textured soil over 3 or 4 years depending how thick the layer is.Also they are great for a walking path in the garden.As far as growing in them you will need to add lots of nitrogen.
If it’s nothing but clay I’ll add wood mulch on top. After a year I’ll mix it in for humic material and re mulch. The quality of the mulch matters too and type per plant and if it’s to be mixed in. Not all mulch are equal.
In its solar forms, notrogen will tend to diffuse from areas of high concentration to liw concentration, so while the fungi decomposing your woodchips only directky remove nitrogen from a few millimeters, the process will tend to deplete the nitrogen from further down.
I have been using mini pine bark as a ground cover. One day about a month after I first started using it I happened to kick some aside and notived all these white filaments growing through the bar
I've gotten walnut chips before - if it helps suppress seedlings, great, as I use most of my chips now in paths. It didn't seem to. :( And as for pine - I have alkalai soil. A load of pine wood/needles made a wonderful springy mulch. A soil test a couple years later did show a slight reduction in ph, but I think it was more due to the buffering of the organic matter than any quality of the pine. I got the same effect from areas covered in green ash.
I feel the same way about shredded brown cardboard. Bring it on! I do use a lot of wood chip-drop, too, but that's mostly for the paths and weed barriers around the beds themselves, and generally gets refreshed every other year or so. Shredded cardboard goes over a top dressing of compost each fall.
I'm interested in algae in soil. It's my understanding it makes up 1-5% of soil and I've seen a lot of videos hinging around destroying it any time it blooms. Mainly with seedlings. It bloomed slightly in my pots and in my garden as we had a cold and wet spring. I didn't do anything because I don't really believe I need to... nature balances itself. But I'm interested in the topic and I think there is a lot of misinformation about it. Such as, if its part of soil composition, it shouldn't be bad to see it. I feel it indicates an environment not optimal for regular plants though.
"makes up 1-5% of soil" - that can't possibly be true - a really good soil is only 5% organic matter and almost none of that is algae. Algae does not bloom?
@@Gardenfundamentals1 Algae blooming only refers to a quick population increase. Okay so digging deeper, numbers are hard to find, but it seems the 1-5% is of the total organic content and not of the total soil composition. So that makes it 5% of 5-10% at best. "In the surface layer, the biomass approximately dou- bled within 13 weeks, from an initial level of 59.2 mg C 100g -1 soil to 118.6mg C in the inoculated columns and to 129.4 mg C in the light control columns, represent- ing 2.5 %, 4.4%, and 4.5%, respectively of the soil organic C. There was no increase in microbial biomass C in the subsurface layers, which corresponds with the microbial counts of bacteria and fungi." "Dehydrogenase (x2.1), urease (x2.8) and phosphatase (x3.1) activities and polysaccharides (+69%) increased by week 21 as a result of the blue-green algae inoculation along with a significant improvement in soil aggregation. However, similar increases occurred in the light control columns, indicating that given appropriate conditions of light and moisture indigenous species may be ultimately as effective as introduced species in bringing about biochemical and microbiological changes to soil." DOI:10.1007/BF00336233 The really difficult thing is almost all of these studies are expensively pay-walled so I can only read like a paragraph. Typical science stuff.. Much being related to rice paddies and middle-east/african deserts. What I'm not really finding is anything about negative impacts of algae on soil and plant health. Which is counter to what I see in gardening videos which usually encourage destroying it. Certainly if your soil is too wet and you're not growing a marshy crop you'll have problems beyond algae. Otherwise I think it's probably a good thing and I just find it interesting in general. Cheers :)
If you want to break down your hardwood or Douglas Fir (or Pinus radiata, they won't like most Pinus much) chip layer faster, I recommend you start some _Psilocybe ovoidiocystidiata_ spawn and then just go right on ahead an innocualte those chips. Keep moist during your dry season, and enjoy the delightful Ovoid fruit-bodies in the spring .😜 You might also try wood-eating _Psilocybe_ in the cyanescens clade, as they fruit in the fall. Although very rarely they can cause a quite unpleasant effect that doesnt occur with any other _Psilocybe_ clade, so I would say Ovoids are a better bet, snd they do _sometimes_ fruit a bit in the fall in addition to the spring. For the less, uh, neuropharmacologically adventurous, you may be able to get _Stropharia rugosoannulata_ going in your hardwood mulch. The "Wine Cap Mushroom" -- they are quite tasty, and pretty easy to grow.
Feeding roots are typically close to the suface and if your soil is already a bit low in nitrogen it could be an issue. If your soil is hydrophobic putting something slightly acidic on it isnt going to help until fungi take hold. Putting mulch on the suface, you have to wonder how much will get into the soil and how much just turns into gas and is lost. Plenty of pros though. You really need enough plants so you cant see the much, unless you are growing really tall trees, i guess
I used a stump grinder to get rid of a stump in my front yard. I removed a lot of wood chips but those that got spread across my lawn caused a lot of new fungus problems.
I worked at two nurseries on the East Coast for twenty years. Both used woodchips to heal in all their balled and burlaped trees. The resulting soil was as rich as forest soil. The scam is that you can get wood chips for free in most areas, and there is no profit for the industry if you don't pay for their mulch. I have used fresh wood chips spread four inches thick early every spring to improve exhausted clay soil on my property for the last forty years. The results have been spectacular. I'll share another dirty secret about dyed mulch. It's recycled construction waste. Treated and untreated lumber that is pale enough to take the dye coloring and gets ground up and put in bags.
They work well for potatoes, but impossible to keep from mixing in the soil. Although they maintain moisture better than just about anything, they are a pain in the vegetable garden and prevent close spacing. We use them everywhere for pathways and have killed thousands of square feet of lawn where they are building soil. Great for perennials too.
I found that with enough water you can grow alot of things in nothing but woodchips, theres a guy on youtube who grows potatos in woodchips, i was growing a variety of greens, carrots, basil and aloe vera just fine.
You should keep mulch a few inches away from base of trees anyway. Piling up mulch around the base ("mulch volcanoes") is bad for various reasons. Mulch around trees only needs to be a couple inches deep. Spread the mulch out wider, not deeper. The funny part about all those myths about various mulches acidifying soil is - it's actually rather difficult to lower the soil's pH on a long term basis. Such as when you want to grow a bed of blueberries. I do have big piles of ramial woodchips that I just leave alone and allow them to compost down over a couple years. Then whenever I need some mulch I just scoop some off the top.
I use any wood chips I can get my hands on. EXCEPT fresh Walnut. Fresh wood chips only will do a nitrogen draw down within a scant few inches of soil contact. Using them as a mulch can help eliminate weed sprouting. Sawdust can have a C:N ratio of up to 560:1 (similar to newspaper & cardboard). Pee on your wood chips regularly lol.
Ernie, my x's grandfather, whom died in the 80's, made composting his art, in his retirement. I took the rest of his 20 year old compost, and threw it in a tomato garden, and had bags, and bags, and bags of tomato's. I could not even give them all away. His secret, which now is no secret, was adding lots of egg shells.
Congratulations on your great accomplishment!!! I recently joined your channel, I live in northern Ontario so it was an added bonus that you were in my zone 4. I love my horticultural association group. Do you ever travel around and do talks?
Mr. Pavlis, I have access to all the free dry pine shavings from a lmber mill near me. It's pretty fine with smaller particles, splinters and curls but a lot of powdery dust too. It's virgin with no chemicals or treatment in it. I've spread this over my vegetable garden (about 800 square feet) after watching your videos on mulching. I've laid it pretty thick. It's not gonna pack like regular sawdust so I should be good with oxygen I think. And it's not nearly as dense as regular wood chips or bagged mulch. Do you think if I let it sit over the winter and maybe add a little nitrogen along the way it can be tilled into the dirt or should I take it off? Thanks so much for you very informative channel..
3 seasons ago I buried a large full bag of fresh wood chips with some general commercial compost in my large planter and I did not add manure or fertilizer or any other source of nitrogen. But I did add some worms that I found in my garden. The first year the flowers were not doing well. The second season it was okay for some flower species but not all, and now at the start of the third season everything that I have growing in there is growing magnificent. Lots of different flowers, pepper seeds germinated, different varieties of flower bulbs that I planted this year started to grow, and for a while even some mushrooms popped up. And I have not watered the planter for months, I only mildly sprayed the pepper seeds with a bottle spray when I put them in the planter. During the winter I turn the planter into a mini greenhouse. And some of the flowers survived the winter and now they look even better as when I bought them. And the planter smells as if you walk into a flower store.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 And the wood forms a habitat for the micro organism, it prevents water evaporation, it protects the micro organisms against UV light, and it is a nutrient source for the micro organisms. And in turn the micro organisms provide nutrients for the plants and the trees. You want to sell books, so you take a populair subject, you take a controversial standpoint, and that sells books. As if what you say is the same for each and every person in each and every situation under all conditions. But you do not mention that every situation is different. Local conditions, for example heavy nitrogen pollution caused by farming or traffic or by industrial processes can make your whole story complete nonsense. How many sponsors do you have that are from the agricultural industry? Do you get payed in any way by companies who produce and/or sell agricultural products such as fertilizer or pesticides?
The impact of Juglone can be detrimental to more than just seedlings. All of the extension papers I've read identify it as a plant respiration inhibitor. Others go on to also attribute adverse effects against photosynthesis, and water transport.
A lot of sources say that, but I have looked for the science on this, and there is almost no proof for natural areas - only in pots in labs. www.gardenmyths.com/walnuts-juglone-allelopathy/
@@Gardenfundamentals1 Thank you for linking to your article. It's good to see that you acknowledge that there is an allelopathic effect going on despite that fact that science cannot fully explain its cause at this time. While we 'may' be misplacing Juglone alone as the true culprit, and the observable effects in the field can certainly be caused by tangential issues, there are too many examples in the fields, orchards, and yards of the process in action to ignore as myth.
What about eucalyptus? I have several trees and would love to use the leaves, branches etc as a mulch but I am unsure if the tannins from the eucalyptus are safe to use in my garden.
Excellent video! I have a huge amount of 2 year old wood chip piles that I got from the local utility right of way clearing. I probably still have close to 20 cubic yards. When I dig down into them I find a brown cottage cheese texture that does not resemble weed chips at all. Would that be considered completely composted?
Only by having a closer look to the chips can you know this. If you are not a professional I guess it does not hurt much if you use them the way they are.
Do worms prefer wood shavings, chips or sawdust I wonder? I use mostly paper based or hemp based bedding for my guinea pigs and hamster but we sometimes change it up and use wood shavings. We compost all their waste, tea leaves, coffee grounds, non glossy cardboard, garden waste and fruit and veg waste. Yes, the compost takes years but we do tend to spread it over the garden every other year, cover it with top soil and start again. We don’t plant in the year that we spread all the unfinished compost though
I am a certified Master Gardener. The problem with wood chips is that they are very high in carbon but the bacteria in the soils which break down organic matter need a good carbon/nitrogen ratio. When presented with too much carbon the bacteria have no other option but to rob the soil around the wood chips of any available nitrogen, leaving your plants with a nitrogen deficiency. You can ad either a nitrogen fertilizer or better yet ad organic matter high in nitrogen such as grass clippings, rotted manure, etc. to help balance the ratio out
It’s crazy that this is still framed as robbing the soil of nitrogen. Wood chips are a nitrogen buffer and enable your soil biome to fix and store more nitrogen. The issue is not that nitrogen is water sociable but that it escapes as ammonia gas. You need carbon to hold bioavailable nitrogen in the soil. Wood chips also add more surface area that the soil biome can life on which increases nutrient cycling. Always mulch your beds with browns.
On an aridisol, wood chips / sawdust can help provide whatever isn't available when you incorporate them into the soil. NPK values don't make much sense to me - eventually we start talking about molecules because most minerals exist in a variety of forms. What about the climate and geology of the region? My impression of the video suggests that forest-debris takes away from the forest, in general. However, perhaps wood chips contribute to a landscape's combustibility in arid climates, and a shift away from plants to multicellular fungi in wet climates? Where are we going to get rid of dead trees, landfills or sludge plants?
@3:30 "...don't put down 2-3 inches of sawdust, this won't allow water to percolate into the soil..." Slight correction, the correct term for this phase is "infiltrate" not percolate. Infiltration is the term for water entering the soil, percolation is the term for water moving through the soil. To be clear, I'm not disputing the concept that was being discussed. Just correcting it for the proper terminology.
Another myth or true: do wood chips attract termites? Can I use them around my house? I am a new subscriber, this is the first video I watched and I love it! Can't wait to see the rest 😊
Thanks, as always!!! There's a quote I see come up a lot when I'm searching for answers that I find amusing, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet" Abraham Lincoln!
Hey @Garden Fundamentals, what if we have high amounts of nitrogen in our soil, but it's red clay? I had the idea to mix in wood chips to help break it up a little along with lots of organic greens. Afterwards I added new nitrogen rich top soil from the store to mix in and mulched it all heavily. I did two layers one with leaves and then topped it with Hay so that the leaves wouldn't blow away in a storm. So far everything seems to be growing nicely. Do you think I made a mistake in the long run?
I had a pretty good vegetable garden 2 years ago, and then last year I covered much of it in wood chips recovered from a free supply from the city... and virtually nothing grew in those areas. I got some tomatillos, but everything else struggled to get more than 6 inches tall. I don't know why that happened, but I definitely won't be doing that again.
I’m in the south and the problem I have is wood chips make an ideal habitat for needle ants. They get under your clothing and feel like being stuck with needles.
I try not to teach or talk about anything that I haven't actually. If I do it's with the understanding that I'm not really sure. The problem is information repeaters. I watched an influencer post a reel about purple dead nettle while laying in a patch of Creeping Charlie. I suspect he googles his content the day before and then "teaches" about it.
I don't buy commercial cow manure, because they are about 90 percent wood chips and 10 percent manure. I actually take a bucket and pick up cow patties in the woods. And put the real thing, in my garden. Weeds and cow patties in a 5 gallon bucket of water makes a good and free fertilizer. I've been gardening for 63 of my 83 years not a master gardner, just an experienced one.
You mention adding fresh woodchips to your garden. What would the concern be for plants/trees that were sprayed with pesticides a week before now it ends up in your veggie bed? Thank you.
When I use woodchips as a mulch, I find the high level of earthworm activity in my soil very soon pulls them down into the vegetable beds. Is that likely to affect roots?
What about hay and the Ruth Stout method ? Really popular these days over here in Europe as it’s a plentiful resource in most regions. What are your views on that.
I definitely compost wood chips. I have several bins that will hold 7 wheelbarrows of wood chips. For each wheelbarrow I will add plenty of nitrogen. Within a week the pile is well over 130 F. After a week I turn it (okay sometimes it is two weeks or more, just because I have other things to do). When I turn the bin into another bin (usually into five parts) I will add plenty of nitrogen. This process will go on for up to 7 weeks. The last process is to sift the composted mulch. If I so choose I can leave it unshifted and use as top dressing. Additionally, if I let the pile sit around for a while (2 - 3 months) I will get a 'mosh pit' of worms. I used to use horse manure in my compost but I had to fetch it and it had some nasty herbicides in it. Right now the chips and nitrogen source are within 20 feet of my bins.
Do you have a place where people can ask questions? I would like to know if I should remove the peony shoots that have come from under ground off my tree peony. Some people call them suckers but I don't know what I should do with them. They do flower.
I'm spreading truckloads of chips every year - place 4-6 inches deep. Great weed preventative and keeps soil moisture.
I have a compost pile that is just wood chips and chicken manure. I bought a 3point chipper for my tractor just for this. My land is very sandy and not a lot of actual nutrient soil, and it’s acidic because it’s oak scrub land. If I turn every 2 weeks, I can compost the chips and manure down in just a few months, and boy does it make a nice fluffy tilth… the straight chicken manure really cooks the wood chips down and provides more than enough nitrogen to eat the chips away… then I mix this compost with regular compost and I’ve been building my fields and pastures back up this way…
I feel like you are passing down to me the wisdom my grandparents couldn’t pass down to me. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Wood chip compost may take years to make but it's excellent quality and extremely fungal dominant. I use it in potting mixes and as a soil amendment for fruit trees with great results.
Ya but according to this guy the fungal to bacteria ratio is not relevant, which is nonsense.
3 seasons ago I buried a large full bag of fresh wood chips with some general commercial compost in my large planter and I did not add manure or fertilizer or any other source of nitrogen. But I did add some worms that I found in my garden. The first year the flowers were not doing well. The second season it was okay for some flower species but not all, and now at the start of the third season everything that I have growing in there is growing magnificent. Lots of different flowers, pepper seeds germinated, different varieties of flower bulbs that I planted this year started to grow, and for a while even some mushrooms popped up. And I have not watered the planter for months, I only mildly sprayed the pepper seeds with a bottle spray when I put them in the planter. During the winter I turn the planter into a mini greenhouse. And some of the flowers survived the winter and now they look even better as when I bought them. And the planter smells as if you walk into a flower store.
@@insAneTunAI have a similar experience the first year the plants seem to do worse than expected but from the 2nd year on plants just thrive.
@@kristofp72 To my opinion composted wood chips are the best source of nutrients that you can provide to your plants and trees. It takes some time to mature but after that the results speak for itself. Of course the local climate and nitrogen pollution are also a big factor. But the wood chips also store more water after they have matured, they provide surface area for the micro organisms, it is a source of food for the micro organisms, and it helps to regulate the soil temperature, and it makes the soil "breath" if you will, so that the beneficial micro organisms also get enough oxygen.
Everywhere else where I applied wood chips and small twigs to the soil my plants are doing much much better. But it took at least a full season before I noticed some positive effects. This season I had mushrooms growing at various places where I applied the woody material several years ago. And now I finally have some success with planting flower bulbs.
I use wood chips as mulch for my Redwood trees and for some of my fruits and veggies that I grow
That is bark and thought this might be better than I thought it would be.
Awhile later I had a pile of about 2 yards sitting next to my driveway ready to be used when I cut a tendon in my hand that slowed down my yard work.
One day as I walked by that pile of wood chips I noticed that some volunteer sweet potatoes had started growing on the wood chips.
I just left them to it and we ended up harvesting some very nice and tasty red sweet potatoes from that pile if wood chips.
I never put any soil or fertilizer on them, they seemed to be living off the fungus that was living off the wood chips.
It was quite the surprise.
Needless to say, I am very happy to use wood chips where ever I can.
Enjoy watching your very informative videos, see you next time.
One thing about sawdust from the shop. Some MDFs and other manufactured sheet goods still contain formaldehyde and other contaminates. Yes, these contaminates do oxidize fairly quickly but still, not in my garden!
good point.
Use arborist wood chips and ypu get the greens and browns along with all the nutrients plants need.
Thanks to Dr. LInda Chalker Scott for her many years of research on the topic of wood chip mulch . You are communicating her findings very well.
I get free woodchips. Mostly juniper and pine because of where I live. Most of the chips are less than 2 weeks old early in the year. They've NEVER caused a growth issue in my garden. Just subscribed.
I put down 10 inches of woodchips(swflorida hot humid wet) and let the grass gro up through it until it was the middle of my shins, enough to hold down the woodchips when I mowed. I continued to let my grass grow tall before I mowed it. By doing so I was releasing rushes of nitrogen and causing the bactrria to explode in population. At this point mycelia has grown across all the wood chips and the bacteria and mycelium are cohabitating symbiotically. Every rush of nitrogen invigorates the bacteria and causes an explosion in population and in Florida after 2 years those wood chips are soil. Rich soil.
We own a tree service business, so consequently produce a lot of wood woodchips which people often request. I personally have removed all wood chips from our gardens because of the fire hazard.
For years I used bagged Cedar Mulch to top dress my garden. It's great at preventing weeds. Then I received a free load of wood chips and was amazed at how helpful they are. They prevent weeds, look great as a mulch and only need to be topped up every 2 to 3 years. Much cheaper and more practical than buying cedar mulch. I top dress with them and I don't find they they sink into the soil. When I need to add more soil, I move the woods chips out of the way, apply soil/compoast and sweep the chips back into place. They sure cut out a lot of work!
I have been using woodchips and dried leaves a lot around the garden, because I have an abundance of both these resources. They make great mulch and are easy to remove and put back in place when weeding.
When I started gardening, I first had to bring in a truckload of soil, because there was none to speak of, just lots of rocks mixed in with either clay or sand. So I did start my first patch with imported soil, but when I decided to expand the garden further I decided I just incorporated a lot of dried leaves into the clay and wait. After one year, the soil was much lighter, but still hard to weed or till. The leaves were s ill not fully broken down and as I expected, I could not harvest much from this area, just a few small potatoes - and lots of weeds, but I had low expectations and not much to lose but a few leftover seeds. In year two though, I ended up with a rich black soil. I can't wait to plant in this bed this year.
For nasty clay soils, add granulated limestone in the spring....It breaks the clay molecule, amazing difference
@@avgejoeschmoe2027Or gypsum, if for some reason you don't want to raise the pH.
I compost stall waste from a friends horse charity. Coarse sawdust saturated with urine and plenty green horse manure will not compost itself. It will not absorb water without washing off the nitrogen. I get best results not turning and letting the clean outer wood make a crust. It seems to get oxygen without turning. Takes at least a year.
I find that woodchips and grass clippings are perfect together. Keep adding grass to your woodchip compost as you cut over the summer
Your grass clippings will make short work of those wood chips
Green and brown mix 👊
Imitating the forest, it's been working for thousands of years! 😄
I'm happy you shed light on this matter. We need more experienced and knowing people like you on TH-cam. Thanks for your insights!
Thank you.
I use sawdust in my walkways where I don't want anything to grow. The fact that they pack down and don't admit water is a good thing. It also takes a long time to break down so I don't have to reapply. One of the few gripes I have about wood chips is that they break down so well and are so good at growing plants that I've found they are miserable in walkways, I'm constantly weeding them and having to apply a new layer.
I tilled too much wood chips into my garden and my crops were horrible. I had to wait another year for the nitrogen level to return to normal. I learned from that mistake.
Only cover on top
Sawdust is great for walkways and paths between garden rows. It eventually breaks down and can then be added to your soil.
Congratulations on the 100k Subscribers 😊
Sounds like you may have seen our video about our mulch urinal. You are right about the rain washing it through, during the rainy season here we prepare it in our green house so the rain doesn’t get to it. It definitely works great for us and is so simple and free! Congratulations on 100k
I saw that great idea but he seemed to be speaking to inorganic soluble nitrogen sources.
“It boggles my mind where they get all this nonsense…” love that. Great informative video, sometimes you have to make a judgment call on whom to believe and you’re my man!
Thank you.
I use hardwood mulch on top of the soil . Works well. I rake it off when necessary.
Many thanks for clarifying the woodchip issues. In Spring I have so much grass I do not have enough carbon sources for making compost, so I use sawdust and it seems to work well in this situation, but I do mix it in well with the grass and certainly don't have layers of sawdust.
I love woodchips.. They made an excellent bedding for my pigs and the pigs did a great job breaking the chips down into compost. I also use them in my deep litter chicken bedding. They are great under perennials and trees.. I do t like them in the annual gardens because they tend to get mixed in the soil during transplanting or weeding. Also note that woodchips attract certain wild animals such as birds, skunk, and raccoons. They love to dig thru the chips to eat grubs and other insects..
30x70 garden. Woodchips or leaves as mulch every spring in the fall it gets tilled in.
It works for me.
I add quite a lot of well shredded woody material to my compost bays but add the result to the surface only (I'm 'no till) & thus don't have an issue with it subsequently depleting my soil's nitrogen level.
Heck, all the paths between my vegetable beds are the same shredded material & I add 2" a year to them & they're constantly breaking down, with plant roots only a couple of inches down from the freshly applied stuff.
Now we need a video about woodchips mixed with grass cutting!
My thoughts too.
Having experience with wood chips I found they will turn to a good textured soil over 3 or 4 years depending how thick the layer is.Also they are great for a walking path in the garden.As far as growing in them you will need to add lots of nitrogen.
If it’s nothing but clay I’ll add wood mulch on top. After a year I’ll mix it in for humic material and re mulch. The quality of the mulch matters too and type per plant and if it’s to be mixed in. Not all mulch are equal.
In its solar forms, notrogen will tend to diffuse from areas of high concentration to liw concentration, so while the fungi decomposing your woodchips only directky remove nitrogen from a few millimeters, the process will tend to deplete the nitrogen from further down.
This guy is teaching you the REAL INFO.
I prefer hardwood because my pathways are inoculated with wine cap mushroom mycelium.🍄👍😁
I have been using mini pine bark as a ground cover. One day about a month after I first started using it I happened to kick some aside and notived all these white filaments growing through the bar
That's a very good sign, your chips are feeding the fungi
I've gotten walnut chips before - if it helps suppress seedlings, great, as I use most of my chips now in paths. It didn't seem to. :( And as for pine - I have alkalai soil. A load of pine wood/needles made a wonderful springy mulch. A soil test a couple years later did show a slight reduction in ph, but I think it was more due to the buffering of the organic matter than any quality of the pine. I got the same effect from areas covered in green ash.
Feeling more confident about using wood chip mulch. But now concerned how all the bagged compost in my area contains so much wood…
Love your video.. loads of information. So is dyed mulch ok for my garden? Much regards from Kentucky.
I feel the same way about shredded brown cardboard. Bring it on! I do use a lot of wood chip-drop, too, but that's mostly for the paths and weed barriers around the beds themselves, and generally gets refreshed every other year or so. Shredded cardboard goes over a top dressing of compost each fall.
I'm interested in algae in soil. It's my understanding it makes up 1-5% of soil and I've seen a lot of videos hinging around destroying it any time it blooms. Mainly with seedlings.
It bloomed slightly in my pots and in my garden as we had a cold and wet spring. I didn't do anything because I don't really believe I need to... nature balances itself. But I'm interested in the topic and I think there is a lot of misinformation about it. Such as, if its part of soil composition, it shouldn't be bad to see it. I feel it indicates an environment not optimal for regular plants though.
"makes up 1-5% of soil" - that can't possibly be true - a really good soil is only 5% organic matter and almost none of that is algae. Algae does not bloom?
@@Gardenfundamentals1 Algae blooming only refers to a quick population increase. Okay so digging deeper, numbers are hard to find, but it seems the 1-5% is of the total organic content and not of the total soil composition. So that makes it 5% of 5-10% at best.
"In the surface layer, the biomass approximately dou-
bled within 13 weeks, from an initial level of 59.2 mg C
100g -1 soil to 118.6mg C in the inoculated columns
and to 129.4 mg C in the light control columns, represent-
ing 2.5 %, 4.4%, and 4.5%, respectively of the soil organic
C. There was no increase in microbial biomass C in the
subsurface layers, which corresponds with the microbial
counts of bacteria and fungi."
"Dehydrogenase (x2.1), urease (x2.8) and phosphatase (x3.1) activities and polysaccharides (+69%) increased by week 21 as a result of the blue-green algae inoculation along with a significant improvement in soil aggregation. However, similar increases occurred in the light control columns, indicating that given appropriate conditions of light and moisture indigenous species may be ultimately as effective as introduced species in bringing about biochemical and microbiological changes to soil."
DOI:10.1007/BF00336233
The really difficult thing is almost all of these studies are expensively pay-walled so I can only read like a paragraph. Typical science stuff..
Much being related to rice paddies and middle-east/african deserts. What I'm not really finding is anything about negative impacts of algae on soil and plant health. Which is counter to what I see in gardening videos which usually encourage destroying it. Certainly if your soil is too wet and you're not growing a marshy crop you'll have problems beyond algae. Otherwise I think it's probably a good thing and I just find it interesting in general. Cheers :)
If you want to break down your hardwood or Douglas Fir (or Pinus radiata, they won't like most Pinus much) chip layer faster, I recommend you start some _Psilocybe ovoidiocystidiata_ spawn and then just go right on ahead an innocualte those chips. Keep moist during your dry season, and enjoy the delightful Ovoid fruit-bodies in the spring .😜
You might also try wood-eating _Psilocybe_ in the cyanescens clade, as they fruit in the fall. Although very rarely they can cause a quite unpleasant effect that doesnt occur with any other _Psilocybe_ clade, so I would say Ovoids are a better bet, snd they do _sometimes_ fruit a bit in the fall in addition to the spring.
For the less, uh, neuropharmacologically adventurous, you may be able to get _Stropharia rugosoannulata_ going in your hardwood mulch. The "Wine Cap Mushroom" -- they are quite tasty, and pretty easy to grow.
Feeding roots are typically close to the suface and if your soil is already a bit low in nitrogen it could be an issue. If your soil is hydrophobic putting something slightly acidic on it isnt going to help until fungi take hold. Putting mulch on the suface, you have to wonder how much will get into the soil and how much just turns into gas and is lost. Plenty of pros though. You really need enough plants so you cant see the much, unless you are growing really tall trees, i guess
It is the microbes that take the nitrogen. Bacteria are so small, they don't remove it below the surface.
I used a stump grinder to get rid of a stump in my front yard. I removed a lot of wood chips but those that got spread across my lawn caused a lot of new fungus problems.
I worked at two nurseries on the East Coast for twenty years. Both used woodchips to heal in all their balled and burlaped trees. The resulting soil was as rich as forest soil.
The scam is that you can get wood chips for free in most areas, and there is no profit for the industry if you don't pay for their mulch.
I have used fresh wood chips spread four inches thick early every spring to improve exhausted clay soil on my property for the last forty years. The results have been spectacular.
I'll share another dirty secret about dyed mulch. It's recycled construction waste. Treated and untreated lumber that is pale enough to take the dye coloring and gets ground up and put in bags.
They work well for potatoes, but impossible to keep from mixing in the soil. Although they maintain moisture better than just about anything, they are a pain in the vegetable garden and prevent close spacing. We use them everywhere for pathways and have killed thousands of square feet of lawn where they are building soil. Great for perennials too.
I found that with enough water you can grow alot of things in nothing but woodchips, theres a guy on youtube who grows potatos in woodchips, i was growing a variety of greens, carrots, basil and aloe vera just fine.
You should keep mulch a few inches away from base of trees anyway. Piling up mulch around the base ("mulch volcanoes") is bad for various reasons. Mulch around trees only needs to be a couple inches deep. Spread the mulch out wider, not deeper.
The funny part about all those myths about various mulches acidifying soil is - it's actually rather difficult to lower the soil's pH on a long term basis. Such as when you want to grow a bed of blueberries.
I do have big piles of ramial woodchips that I just leave alone and allow them to compost down over a couple years. Then whenever I need some mulch I just scoop some off the top.
Pine needles are without doubt the greatest weed prevention mulch of all.
I use any wood chips I can get my hands on. EXCEPT fresh Walnut.
Fresh wood chips only will do a nitrogen draw down within a scant few inches of soil contact.
Using them as a mulch can help eliminate weed sprouting.
Sawdust can have a C:N ratio of up to 560:1 (similar to newspaper & cardboard).
Pee on your wood chips regularly lol.
The problem comes with plants that have shallow roots such as Rhododendrons.
@@Brian-uy2tj Back to Eden may have a solution for you
@@crazysquirrel9425
Ernie, my x's grandfather, whom died in the 80's, made composting his art, in his retirement. I took the rest of his 20 year old compost, and threw it in a tomato garden, and had bags, and bags, and bags of tomato's. I could not even give them all away. His secret, which now is no secret, was adding lots of egg shells.
Egg shells do nothing - unless your soil is very acidic.
www.gardenmyths.com/eggshells-not-use-garden/
very easy to add N to its C for an ideal ratio about 10 :1 - just have to mix 2/3 of grass clippings w/ 1/3 of wood chips
That won't give you a C:N ratio of 10.
www.gardenmyths.com/composting-ratio-browns-greens/
Congratulations on your great accomplishment!!! I recently joined your channel, I live in northern Ontario so it was an added bonus that you were in my zone 4. I love my horticultural association group. Do you ever travel around and do talks?
I am in zone 5 - Guelph.
I do give talks quite regularly. www.gardenmyths.com/public-speaking-topics-robert-pavlis/
how much wood would a wood chuck chuck, if a wood chuck would chuck wood ?
Mr. Pavlis, I have access to all the free dry pine shavings from a lmber mill near me. It's pretty fine with smaller particles, splinters and curls but a lot of powdery dust too. It's virgin with no chemicals or treatment in it. I've spread this over my vegetable garden (about 800 square feet) after watching your videos on mulching. I've laid it pretty thick. It's not gonna pack like regular sawdust so I should be good with oxygen I think. And it's not nearly as dense as regular wood chips or bagged mulch. Do you think if I let it sit over the winter and maybe add a little nitrogen along the way it can be tilled into the dirt or should I take it off? Thanks so much for you very informative channel..
3 seasons ago I buried a large full bag of fresh wood chips with some general commercial compost in my large planter and I did not add manure or fertilizer or any other source of nitrogen. But I did add some worms that I found in my garden. The first year the flowers were not doing well. The second season it was okay for some flower species but not all, and now at the start of the third season everything that I have growing in there is growing magnificent. Lots of different flowers, pepper seeds germinated, different varieties of flower bulbs that I planted this year started to grow, and for a while even some mushrooms popped up. And I have not watered the planter for months, I only mildly sprayed the pepper seeds with a bottle spray when I put them in the planter. During the winter I turn the planter into a mini greenhouse. And some of the flowers survived the winter and now they look even better as when I bought them. And the planter smells as if you walk into a flower store.
Decomposition of the wood has progressed to the point where it is no longer robbing the soil of nitrogen.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 And the wood forms a habitat for the micro organism, it prevents water evaporation, it protects the micro organisms against UV light, and it is a nutrient source for the micro organisms. And in turn the micro organisms provide nutrients for the plants and the trees.
You want to sell books, so you take a populair subject, you take a controversial standpoint, and that sells books. As if what you say is the same for each and every person in each and every situation under all conditions.
But you do not mention that every situation is different. Local conditions, for example heavy nitrogen pollution caused by farming or traffic or by industrial processes can make your whole story complete nonsense.
How many sponsors do you have that are from the agricultural industry? Do you get payed in any way by companies who produce and/or sell agricultural products such as fertilizer or pesticides?
Thank you for this video, there is so much nonsense being spread on youtube about gardening now
The impact of Juglone can be detrimental to more than just seedlings. All of the extension papers I've read identify it as a plant respiration inhibitor. Others go on to also attribute adverse effects against photosynthesis, and water transport.
A lot of sources say that, but I have looked for the science on this, and there is almost no proof for natural areas - only in pots in labs.
www.gardenmyths.com/walnuts-juglone-allelopathy/
@@Gardenfundamentals1 Thank you for linking to your article. It's good to see that you acknowledge that there is an allelopathic effect going on despite that fact that science cannot fully explain its cause at this time. While we 'may' be misplacing Juglone alone as the true culprit, and the observable effects in the field can certainly be caused by tangential issues, there are too many examples in the fields, orchards, and yards of the process in action to ignore as myth.
Jesus finally some gardening content without extra myths and pseudoscientific stuff
What about eucalyptus? I have several trees and would love to use the leaves, branches etc as a mulch but I am unsure if the tannins from the eucalyptus are safe to use in my garden.
I would compost them first to get microbes to consume the oils and waxes, or you could end up with quite hydrophobic soil
Sharing your wealth of knowledge and experience has made my garden newbie experience a lot less confusing. On to 250,000 subscribers.
Excellent video! I have a huge amount of 2 year old wood chip piles that I got from the local utility right of way clearing. I probably still have close to 20 cubic yards. When I dig down into them I find a brown cottage cheese texture that does not resemble weed chips at all. Would that be considered completely composted?
Only by having a closer look to the chips can you know this. If you are not a professional I guess it does not hurt much if you use them the way they are.
Do worms prefer wood shavings, chips or sawdust I wonder? I use mostly paper based or hemp based bedding for my guinea pigs and hamster but we sometimes change it up and use wood shavings. We compost all their waste, tea leaves, coffee grounds, non glossy cardboard, garden waste and fruit and veg waste. Yes, the compost takes years but we do tend to spread it over the garden every other year, cover it with top soil and start again. We don’t plant in the year that we spread all the unfinished compost though
My trees and berries love woodchips! I’m trying to make a forest tho
I am a certified Master Gardener. The problem with wood chips is that they are very high in carbon but the bacteria in the soils which break down organic matter need a good carbon/nitrogen ratio. When presented with too much carbon the bacteria have no other option but to rob the soil around the wood chips of any available nitrogen, leaving your plants with a nitrogen deficiency. You can ad either a nitrogen fertilizer or better yet ad organic matter high in nitrogen such as grass clippings, rotted manure, etc. to help balance the ratio out
How much and how deep do wood chips deplete the nitrogen?
@@TheAndro5
Artesian Well system, slanted slope, irrigate all garden islands and wood chip Path ways…
Always can incorporate hugelculture style gardens later
It’s crazy that this is still framed as robbing the soil of nitrogen. Wood chips are a nitrogen buffer and enable your soil biome to fix and store more nitrogen.
The issue is not that nitrogen is water sociable but that it escapes as ammonia gas.
You need carbon to hold bioavailable nitrogen in the soil. Wood chips also add more surface area that the soil biome can life on which increases nutrient cycling. Always mulch your beds with browns.
@@sluu101
Congratulations!👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 You’re very informative (the best) with FACTS! I appreciate you. Thank you!
On an aridisol, wood chips / sawdust can help provide whatever isn't available when you incorporate them into the soil. NPK values don't make much sense to me - eventually we start talking about molecules because most minerals exist in a variety of forms. What about the climate and geology of the region? My impression of the video suggests that forest-debris takes away from the forest, in general. However, perhaps wood chips contribute to a landscape's combustibility in arid climates, and a shift away from plants to multicellular fungi in wet climates? Where are we going to get rid of dead trees, landfills or sludge plants?
Thank you for all the information you share here.
@3:30 "...don't put down 2-3 inches of sawdust, this won't allow water to percolate into the soil..."
Slight correction, the correct term for this phase is "infiltrate" not percolate. Infiltration is the term for water entering the soil, percolation is the term for water moving through the soil.
To be clear, I'm not disputing the concept that was being discussed. Just correcting it for the proper terminology.
The chips as mulch composts in place, making lovely soil.
Another myth or true: do wood chips attract termites? Can I use them around my house?
I am a new subscriber, this is the first video I watched and I love it! Can't wait to see the rest 😊
Great audiobook book 📕 full of information thanks ☺️
I used broken down wood chips that I soaked with Urine for a year. Boom! Biggest harvest EVER
Thanks, as always!!! There's a quote I see come up a lot when I'm searching for answers that I find amusing, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet" Abraham Lincoln!
Thank you.
Good solid advice
Hey @Garden Fundamentals, what if we have high amounts of nitrogen in our soil, but it's red clay? I had the idea to mix in wood chips to help break it up a little along with lots of organic greens. Afterwards I added new nitrogen rich top soil from the store to mix in and mulched it all heavily. I did two layers one with leaves and then topped it with Hay so that the leaves wouldn't blow away in a storm. So far everything seems to be growing nicely. Do you think I made a mistake in the long run?
Provided your soil has high nitrogen, you should be fine with this.
I had a pretty good vegetable garden 2 years ago, and then last year I covered much of it in wood chips recovered from a free supply from the city... and virtually nothing grew in those areas. I got some tomatillos, but everything else struggled to get more than 6 inches tall. I don't know why that happened, but I definitely won't be doing that again.
I’m in the south and the problem I have is wood chips make an ideal habitat for needle ants. They get under your clothing and feel like being stuck with needles.
Thanks Mr. P. And congratulations! 💐💚🙃
Thanks. Enjoying your videos.
I try not to teach or talk about anything that I haven't actually. If I do it's with the understanding that I'm not really sure. The problem is information repeaters. I watched an influencer post a reel about purple dead nettle while laying in a patch of Creeping Charlie. I suspect he googles his content the day before and then "teaches" about it.
No need to suspect. Some TH-camrs do so exactly.
I don't buy commercial cow manure, because they are about 90 percent wood chips and 10 percent manure. I actually take a bucket and pick up cow patties in the woods. And put the real thing, in my garden. Weeds and cow patties in a 5 gallon bucket of water makes a good and free fertilizer. I've been gardening for 63 of my 83 years not a master gardner, just an experienced one.
I love this guy!
You mention adding fresh woodchips to your garden. What would the concern be for plants/trees that were sprayed with pesticides a week before now it ends up in your veggie bed? Thank you.
Wood chips consists mostly of the wood part. The leaves and small branches add almost no volume - so pesticide on them is not a problem.
Congrat for your 123k subs!!! You deserve it!!!!
Thank you so much!!
When I use woodchips as a mulch, I find the high level of earthworm activity in my soil very soon pulls them down into the vegetable beds. Is that likely to affect roots?
Your content is amazing🙂 Subscribed.
What about hay and the Ruth Stout method ? Really popular these days over here in Europe as it’s a plentiful resource in most regions. What are your views on that.
Works great - what I use in veg gardens.
Great honest video thank you !
Can i use shredded bark, redwood bark to my raised beds as mulch? I prefer straw, but i can't find clean straw.
I definitely compost wood chips. I have several bins that will hold 7 wheelbarrows of wood chips. For each wheelbarrow I will add plenty of nitrogen. Within a week the pile is well over 130 F. After a week I turn it (okay sometimes it is two weeks or more, just because I have other things to do). When I turn the bin into another bin (usually into five parts) I will add plenty of nitrogen. This process will go on for up to 7 weeks. The last process is to sift the composted mulch. If I so choose I can leave it unshifted and use as top dressing. Additionally, if I let the pile sit around for a while (2 - 3 months) I will get a 'mosh pit' of worms.
I used to use horse manure in my compost but I had to fetch it and it had some nasty herbicides in it. Right now the chips and nitrogen source are within 20 feet of my bins.
Garden Fundamentals please discuss HugelKulture and Artesian Well system in the future.
I worked on an organic farm long ago.
Can I use rice husk as mulch?
Since it’s abundant here.
In UK we use bark from the trees not wood chips. What about this?
Do you have a place where people can ask questions? I would like to know if I should remove the peony shoots that have come from under ground off my tree peony. Some people call them suckers but I don't know what I should do with them. They do flower.
Thank You! And congrats on 100k!
I use wood chips for pathways round my vegetable gardens with cardboard underneath love my free cardboard boxes suppressing weeds underneath 😊
Good information.
Hello! I have a lot of pine cones falling in my garden, can I use them as a kind of mulch? Thank you!
Yes
THANKS FOR THIS INFORMATION 👍
My favorite mulch is 70 percent wood chips ,20 percent compost and 10 percent manure. It always worked for me