What a great thread!

I'm new at all this. After reading a lot, I'm using free fresh wood chips to mulch my raised bed paths, and I was thinking of smothering my lawn with cardboard and fresh wood chips in prep for a permaculture food forest. Apparently I have bermuda grass. I was wondering if it would work, or if I would regret it?

I'm collecting cardboard from the neighborhood hardware store -they seem to be pleasantly amused by me- and from any store I go to that has boxes broken down. My favorite tree service also seems to be amused by me and happy to deliver wood chips for free. I've been reading about the horrors of bermuda grass. It all seems a little dramatic; I'm trying to keep my gardening endeavors a low stress activity. I've been advised that I'll have to kill the bermuda grass with round-up.

I don't want to do that.

I'm thinking I'll try to smother it with the cardboard and woodchips. I'm hoping that this will help with the clay soil and the fact the pasture was used for llama and is probably compacted. I'm wondering if I should till first? Or just layer with cardboard and wood chips? How long do you all think it will take for it to become a quality soil? Do you think it will work?

Here's the area I'm thinking of covering with woodchips/cardboard:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/these5acres/3753859800/

Thanks to everyone for sharing!

Kelly

Here is a link that might be useful: Link to kellywinstonsalem's photostream on flickr

OK, so the three service just dumped a ton of fresh mulch in my garden. I was planning on using it for the paths around my beds. I have so much I don't know what to do with it. The tree company mentioned the nitrogen thing. I am considering using it around my shrubs and trees, but am afraid of doing damage. What else can I do with the mulch? Burn it?

Wood chip mulch is perfectly fine to use around any type of woody plants like trees or shrubs. Any nitrogen tie-up that might occur is limited to the soil surface and has virtually no negative impact on plants with deeper root systems like trees and shrubs. You could notice some effect on more shallowly rooted annuals or perennials, but even that is easily compensated for by the application of a higher nitrogen type of fertilizer - urea, alfalfa meal, blood meal, cottonseed meal, etc.

I'm rather surprised the tree trimming company bothered to even make a point of the nitrogen issue - this is a very well documented issue and unless you are incorporating the wood chips into the soil - rather than applying as a mulch - there is minimal concern about any nutrient deficiency assocciated with using wood chips.

IF you have more than you can use, can you store them for future use? Share with your neighbors?

Here is a link that might be useful: The Myth of Wood Chip Mulch

PNewgardener - Use it as a mulch!

The stuff is great because it decomposes slowly. The so-called "nitrogen robbing" is minimal compared to the benefits of smothering weeds and saving soil moisture.

There are so many myths floating around out there about using wood chips as mulch that if one paid them any attention you would never use any. Wood chips used as mulch, and mulch is sonething laid on top of soil, will not cause any nitrogen loss in that soil.
I have had tree trimmers tell me I did not want these wood chips because 1) they are fresh and, 2) they are too old and, 3) they have leaves mixed in and, 4) there are no leaves mixed in and, they will cause nitrogen depeletion. They did not, will not and in fact I have noticed better growth in plants where wood chip mulches have been used then where no wood chip mulches were used.

Yes, that's true. But in my experience, the worst growth in my completely mulched yard is where I've mulched with wood chips. If you want to see plants take off, mulch with leaves or hay or seaweed or straw or newspaper. Wood mulch takes many years before it nourishes the soil. I like my mulches to do double duty---and not wait years for it.

The OP posted that he had "200 yards of mulch" delivered. Because there's so much confusion about mulch, I'd like to be a little nit-picky. The OP did not have "200 yards of mulch" delivered. What he had was 200 yards of wood chips delivered, which he planned on using as a mulch.

I used relatively freshly shredded christmas tree as a mulch on two rows (175 seedlings per row) of saskatoon seedlings. Mortality rates were about 75% on those rows. Rows without the mulch had a 10% mortality rate which is normal. I do not know the reason why.

Lloyd

Lloyd sorry about your seedling.
Let us know what the problem is, if you find out what happen.
annpat, the path ideal sounds good to me.
tulas, I never had the nitrogen depression in my sandy soil.
Maybe it is all the nitrogen rich compost that has built up over the past few year. I am going to bury coffee waste 24" deep & mix in the soil, then cover it with 12" of soil. Later I am going to put in asparagus crowns & cover with 12" of soil, 2" at a time as the spear grow.
gardengal48, thanks for your input & link.
coffeehaus, I have the same garden experience as you, but I have sand not clay.
Every one say I am crazy, but I am going to add clay to my soil, in ONE bed to see if it will help hold the OM.
A bio-char bed also.
I believe want I can run my finger though when it comes to garden myths.

Here in Austin we have generally poor soil and I'm an avid organic gardener. I love wood mulch and what it does. It works on some geologic time scale but when I'm taking someone's front yard that used to grow bermuda grass and trying to start a vegetable garden I make ample use of free biomass in the form of wood mulch.

Usually the beds are tilled or opened with a hand trowel and ample compost is added. The paths get cardboard to smother the bermuda and then 6" plus worth of wood mulch. It holds the cardboard down, smothers the bermuda and improves the soil long term. Another benefit is that it's springy enough that it's good for my back. I love the extra cushion it gives me when I'm walking around the beds.

A note on bermuda. I've stopped weeding it much by hand. It's a horrible mess and hassle. The paths get cardboard and mulch and any that grows through somehow..just gets more cardboard and mulch. If it comes up in the garden bed I smother it with several sheets of newspaper and more compost. Smothering it is definitely the way to go, I'm trying to brow brocolli not bermuda grass.

Each season you can add more mulch to the paths and if it's broken down well enough you could always rake it onto the bed if it's well decomposed. I prefer using compost (mine has all the leaves I can get my hand on) in the beds. It improves the soil faster, smothers weeds and helps hold on to moisture.

In my yard I use the wood mulch around trees in large swaths. 6" plus deep seems fine, the mulch is free and the less grass I have to mow the better. If I have ornamental beds that I don't have time or energy to get to till next season you can cover them with mulch in the meantime. It holds water, encourages worms and when you're ready you can just rake the material back to plant whatever you care to.

I prefer slow and easy gardening as much as possible. I'll make a nickel squeal and try to hold onto biomass as much as possible. I do agree with what's been said about mulching paths but not the beds themselves. I'd prefer to use leaves, hay or compost for that.

If you have more mulch than you can use, just pile it up out of the way. Save your urine in old orange juice jugs and pour it on. The N will help break the mulch down over time and your mulch will break down in a year or so if kept moist this way.

I've helped move probably 20+ dump truck loads of mulch over time and it's worth it. It's slow but it builds biomass and adds vital organic matter to poor soils.

Have fun and good luck. Slow and steady wins the race.

any mulch, wood chip or something else, applied to soil will aid in suppressing weed growth, aid in keeping soils cooler, eventually aid in adding organic matter to the soil, and aid in keeping the soil moisture level higher. In some soils the higher soil moisture levels will be very good because the plants will then have moisture to use to grow, however, in other soils that tend to hold too much moisture that can be bad since the extra moisture may well be enough to kill seedlings.
If your soil is heavy, dense clay it needs to be properly, and well, amended with organic matter before any mulch is applied. The drainage issue must be resolved first.

Kim, you forgot that there's such a thing as Rubber mulch.

Hi goudananda, Do you have sugar sand in Austin?

Sugar sand? I've never heard of it.

Good. It is my understanding that it is a fine white sand that will not hold water or Organic Matter.
The lady who told us about it has 12 horses & all the OM that most gardener only dream of. Still it is not enough to build the sand into soil that will grow plant with out a lot of care. But she is Organic & battles on.

Sugar sand is a color of sand, like you find on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan. Animal manures mixed in any sand will not be enough to make that sand into good soil, you also need vegetative waste to mix with it in a 3 parts of vegetative waste to 1 part manure ratio.

gouda, I'm interested to read your experiences with bermuda grass, because people often say that mulches will not work to suppress it. I've always thought that was suspect, but I wondered if people maybe had more tenacious bermuda grass than we have in Maine. I can't think of many weeds I can't suppress with a good newspaper mulch---I just can't imagine that bermuda is that difficult. Your experience sounds like mine.

Seems a lot of posters are missing the two key points, large quantities of wood chips are often available for free, and often with free delivery too. Is anyone offering free delivery of large quantities of seaweed? If you need ten cubic yards of mulch how many trips would it take carrying it in a bucket up the side of a cliff to take it from the beach to the parking lot where you parked your car?
As far as leaves go, in places like southern California large quantities of leaves are usually unavailable. People have small yards and are not going to waste it growing a huge shade tree. Besides, most trees people grow around here do not drop large quantities of leaves all at once like
the deciduous trees do in colder parts of the country.

I make large piles along the high tide mark, then drive my truck along the beach and toss the seaweed in, although I won't deny that I have climbed cliffs before with garbage bags of seaweed on my back. I've got a couple sweet places to get it now. A day at the beach whether sunning or gathering seaweed is still a day at the beach. I enjoy my seaweed gathering trips.

Well in southern California you would probably be arrested for driving a pickup truck on most beaches, and if the beach was in a marine protected area you aren't allowed to remove anything from the beach or water, not even a rock.
On the more populated beaches they do have big sand cleaning machines that pickup kelp washed up on the beach along with all the other garbage, but I don't know what they do with it, probably send it to a landfill.

californian I could not agree with you more. I had 15 cubic yards of wood chips delivered for free from a local tree service. Half went to mulch my fruit trees and vegetable garden. The other half was used to start a very large compost pile. Anything else would have been $ 27.00 per cubic yard delivered. In other words if I had purchased this much mulch from a landscape supply company it would have cost me $ 405.00.

Thank goodness for free wood chip mulch and free coffee grounds.

Let me add my two cents worth about the cost of having mulch or amendments delivered or even attempting to buy enough from Lowe's or Home Depot. When one has a sizeable yard, FREE is an absolute necessity. I live in the Mojave Desert, I do shred what little I have. If I can capture leaves, I do. But when one has red clay soil and a lack of natural amendments, even with a compost pile, I'm looking for no cost. But we don't have lots of tree trimmers here cuz we are in the desert, also have a couple of huge commercial composting facilities in the area who are more than willing to take all contributions. They took all the sardines that died off recently. I can only get one 60 gal trash barrel of free compost a few times a year from the city as there is such a need for city plantings & parks. Pickin's are slim around here.

Come to Brooklyn, I'll let you rake all the leaves you want, still working on the remaining ten 55 gallon trash bags from last fall, started off with 35 in the winter.

MoleX, you need one of those nifty leaf & twig shredders from Harbor Freight like the guy in Oregon uses for his leaves every year. His BIG shredded leaf piles are steaming as they compost down. The guy posted a video on this site, it's pretty amazing.

I live on a dead end block, cut by the Q/B subway line. I start at one end of the block using my gas powered leaf blower, and blow 6 house lengths of leaves onto my lawn, then I run em over with a mulching mower, rake em up, ????, profit.

;p

Guess I'm lucky, I have 4 fully mature sugar maples on my lawn which give me more leaves than I know what to do with. Last year prior to my starting a compost bin, I raked and tarp dragged to the road a pile 4 Ft high, 4 Ft wide and nearly 100' long.

This year I am finally looking foward to the leaf drops. I'll have a ton of nice mulch for next year as well as lots of good compost material. I'll keep the mulching leaves in black contractor bags in the garage or barn to keep them dry so they don't break down too much and then just pile all the rest up and use it when needed.

I just scored a big truckload on chipped pine needles, pine bark, and pine wood. I was driving down the street and saw a huge pile of pine boughs ready to be fed into one of these chipper machines by a tree trimming crew. I stopped and said if they needed a place to dump the stuff after chipping it they could dump it in my driveway, but only if it was pure pine tree, I didn't want any other kind of tree included. They said they had to ask their boss, who said OK, so now I have enough for all my own needs and the rest I will either give away or sell. I like the pine needle stuff because it smells so good and makes such a fluffy mulch, nice to walk on if you put it on you garden paths, plus some say it will help acidify the alkaline soil many of us have in southern California.
So keep you eyes open for tree trimmers chipping up tree trimmings, especially if its a kind of tree you want. But beware if they have any palm tree trimmings, you don't want that. Most of them will deliver it for free if they don't have to drive too far, and can dump the whole load so they don't have to make an additional trip to the landfill or wherever they usually dump it, and sometimes have to pay to dump it.

Talking about freebies, I had 20 cu yds of freshly cut and shredded wood chips delivered to my yard last November. Lots of leaves, mostly needles, but all mixed in.

Once arrived, part that was used to fill two 4'x4'x4' bins and the rest just sat untouched. For the first few weeks, they sure heat up, I saw steam. After the wet winter months, chips in the bins shrunk by about 25%. The big pile also looked smaller.

Last week, I used them as mulch around all the flower bed. So almost all flowerbed now have 4-8" of wood chips.

Just as an experiment, I planted a few flats of annuals, mostly impatient, directly in the woodchips. Each hole was 2-3 times the size of the plant and about 3" deep. I fill the bottom with compost then added some time released fert. Put the plant in the middle of the hole and filled the sides with compost too.

For comparison, I also planted some in soil next to the ones planted in wood chips. I wonder which ones will grow better.

I use wood mulch, but what I do is mix grass clippings with it a few weeks before I use it. This causes it to partially compose very quickly reducing it's tendency to use up nitrogen in soil. I have very sandy soil, and use this same "compost" in the soil as well. I have no nitrogen issues when doing this, and it turns sandy soil over time into nice black nutrient rich and water conserving soil.

I want to use wood chips that have been in the chukar (partridge) house all summer. Have some from last winter also. I have a veg garden that needs HELP. How do I determine how much nitrogen product to mix with the bags of wood chips? Any suggestion on which source of nitrogen is best? Don't know if all products of nitrogen are available in the local market. My chukars just don't make enough poop to fill a two gal bucket in a year. I know I need to get a soil analysis and have not done that since I will harvest this weekend.

so what was decided? wood chips are only good on top of the soil?
can wood chips be used in lasagna style gardening? for example: newspaper, wood chips, manure, leaves, grass clippings, straw??? or would that inhibit growth?

btw - in the Austin TX area, the local landfills gives away free wood chip mulch, all year. But if you have trees/limbs/brush you need to drop off, you have to pay. :)

from what i have read on this forum, free mulch from a landfill isn't that uncommon.

here are just 3 places for free mulch in the Austin area:

http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/sws/residential_fm812_center.htm

http://www.roundrocktexas.gov/docs/recycling_center_brochure_7-31-08.pdf

http://www.wilco.org/CountyDepartments/RecyclingCenter/tabid/485/language/en-US/Default.aspx

"so what was decided?"

I'd say there's a consensus that chips can be mulch. That is, on top of the soil.

Lots of disagreement about incorporating; whether tilling, plowing, lasagna, etc.

Something that hasn't been mentioned ( at least to my notice) is difference in locales. Here in the northeast most people don't incorporate high C materials. Yet I have friends in the west that swear by it(wood chips).
Here we have ample rainfall and acidic soil, moving westward becomes arid and alkaline.

I too get plenty of wood mulch for free. Our local tipping station, where I take my gargabe, has one area where people dump leaves and grass (which they haul off for the municipal composting process at the landfill site) and another area where people dump brush, wood, and other things. Ever so often, they run all this stuff through a huge grinder, making a huge mountain of wood mulch that is free for the taking.

Now while I would never use this stuff in my vegetable garden or even in my compost pile, it makes excellent ground mulch in areas that I don't want grass to grow, such as paths between my raised beds, in the general area around my compost piles where I don't want it grassy nor do I want it muddy. I even use it to form a barrier around flower beds between the bed and the lawn. Another use is in what I'll call utility areas, where I keep things that I wouldn't want grass to grow up all around such as my trailer, extra barrels to make new rainbarrels or compost tumblers, various other garden tools, trash cans, etc.

I'll say that even in flwer or garden beds that wood mulch is many, many times better than what I've got in some of my beds. The previous owner if my house at some point thought it was a good idea to cover the beds with a rock mulch, in white. It may have looked good that first year, but then I'm sure it quickly went downhill. I dug up iris rhizomes that went down over a foot deep, where they were planted originally. That's how much stuff has been piled on top since it was originally planted. Whole layers of those rocks just make the whole beds a disaster. Wood mulch would have rotted and added value to the beds. The rocks just make trying to do anything there a disaster. I pick them out, little by little as I am working any of the soil, but with that experience I can definitively say that you should never put anything in flower beds (or vegetable) unless it will eventually rot down.

QUOTE - "Now while I would never use this stuff in my vegetable garden or even in my compost pile..."

Can you elaborate on why you don't use it in your compost pile?

I spray my fresh wood chips with a molasses or honey water solution and pile them up for a few months. The sugar speeds up the decomposition. They really cook. In a few months they are ready to use a mulch. I use them as mulch in the vegetable garden for 3-4 more months. Maybe even spray again if they need it. By then, they are decomposed enough to work into the soil. They encourage the saprophytic phase of mycorrhizal fungus until the right roots come along. They grow a fungus that kills nematodes. They release more nitrogen than they consume at that point. They release potassium. Etc.

Here is a link that might be useful: Building up Soil

I don't like using it in my vegetable garden or compost pile because it is big chunks of wood. Even in a good working compost pile it could take years for it to rot down. I want my vegetable garden to have fine, mixable soil; not something with big lumps of wood in it. In an established perrenial garden bed, with shrubs and stuff, I'd consider using this wood mulch, but would probably still go with shredded leaves instead. I use this wood mulch extensively as about a foot wide border around the outside of each of my garden beds that borders lawn, and I pile it THICK. Inside that I'll use shredded leaves, straw, or even compost as mulch.

Thank you Scotty66 for posting info about Austin. I'm right up the road off of 812/21, so I'll be taking advantage of this next week! I'm in the process of planning out my spring beds and have decided to use wood mulch. Very excited after watching the Back To Eden movie, very inspirational! backtoedenfilm dot com to watch it. My original plan was to lasagna with compost/hay. I think I will still lasagna, but defiantly will be topping with wood mulch :)

The Power Company here is now spraying the small saplings that they would have chipped up every ten years.
So no more wood chips from them & some more unemployment for the chipping workers.
They sprayed the tree & left them standing dead.

I collect Christmas trees after the holidays. I hold them upside down by the trunk and lop off the branches with a machete, then layer the branches over my perennial beds. The trunks make useful poles in the garden for about three years, sturdy, and after the first summer, light. In spring, I remove the branches once things have started to warm up and put them through the chipper-shredder. I use the chips as a fragrant mulch on the paths between my raised beds. Because I don't know where the trees are from, or how they were raised, I don't use them as mulch for my beds, but in the paths they make a nice clean scented surface to walk on (though not barefoot).

That Back To Eden video is pretty preachy about the bible.

I use wood chips from Asplundh when I can, usually about 6"/yr., under the apple and peach trees now for the last 4 years. It is amazing how much they break down considering this isn't exactly a wet climate here. In the last 3 years I've put down about 1 1/2' in total and there is currently about a 1" deep mulch now.

One of the best things about the chips here, as opposed to leaves and grass clippings (my other principle materials available) is that they don't shed rain, the other materials tend to shed rain particularly if applied too thick. the chips definitely help retain moisture, my primary aim.

Getting a full truck load or 2 of chips free from the Asplundh boys every year is a huge benefit.

Oh, the worms sure have a ball in the soil under the mulch!

MoleX, yes it is. Personally, that message isn't really my thing, but the gardening side of the movie is :). I have four beds going with a heavy layer of mulch and I'm really liking the results. There are several people on youtube taking the 'method' to trial as well.
Michael357, WOW on the worms!! I came back mainly to comment on your mention of the worms. I have never in my life seen so many worms on my property. Sure I would find one or two here and there digging around, but of the beds that I have mulched and planted ... it seems every worm in the neighborhood has moved in. I'm lovin' it!!

Scott66, I used wood chips in a lasagna garden 3 or 4 years ago. They were layered with grass clippings, leaves and manure and the soil is stil good. I have a huge pile of chips in my field and I love them. DH brings me front end loader piles of chips to make paths over our horrible clay soil and around the raspberries. Paths get renewed semi-annually. When you have a large area to cope with, it is nice to have a supply of material that can be used for many purposes. I have used chips in a new flower bed but that is spectacularly unsuccessful. There were too many problems with this bed in addition to the chips to work.

Giving it away yet not many people seem interested, go figure.

Lloyd

If the soil under the mulch is very healthy and filled with OM, I don't think it matters if the plants are mulched with wood chips. I used it for years and never saw a stunned yellow plant. All my plants are glowing with health.

It's funny to read all of this talk about free wood chips. Where I live nothing is free. The tree choppers have mulch businesses hence no free wood chips.

I have just started having wood chips delivered. 2 loads and it looks like it will take 20 loads. There is a section where the excess will be stored. I hope that pine chips won't be a dis-advantage to the growing of irises, aquilelia, and lupins.

Seems to me that wood should be one of the sources of organic matter that is applied to soil. Wood is partly made of long-lasting organic molecules (lignins) that serve as food for mycorrhizal fungi. I add wood chips to my compost piles when I can, and I almost always can.

How well wood chips works as a mulch and soil amendment depends upon a lot of factors. What kinds of trees were the source of the chips? How small are the chips? How much leaf and small twig is in the waste? How fresh are the chips? What is the climate where they will be used? Does the soil beneath the wood chips have lots of organic matter in it already, and what kind of OM is in the soil (decomposed wood, fresh compost, aged compost?)

From what I read here, it seems like wood chips work well in hot, humid environments, almost regardless of other factors. They also seem to work well when their use is ongoing, where there has been wood mulch in place for years.

Fresh, small wood chips that contains lots of twigs and fresh leaves composts very hot and seems like an ideal mulch to suppress weeds. Just like compost piles, fresh chips benefit from being in a pile where the vapors, both water and ammonia, can be reabsorbed by the pile. I'd even suggest covering the pile while it is at its hottest. Covering the pile will slow the loss of water and ammonia and speed its decomposition.

I'm thinking of a four-layer method of creating new garden beds. Starting in the fall, on the bare soil, apply some of the humic shale ore like Zamzow's Huma Green. Maybe scratch it into the very top of the soil. Then lay on four inches of finished compost. Then several inches of unfinished compost, and finally a mulch of wood chips that have had a chance to decompose for a bit. I think there would be a good interaction between the unfinished compost and the wood chips.

By spring the finished compost will be integrated with the topsoil, and the layers above might be a perfect mulch. Dig through it to plant your plants, perhaps keeping it away from the plant stems until the plants are established and the weather warms up. The wood chips will protect the layers underneath and eventually become part of the compost.