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| There is a large pile of wood chips near where I live. It has been there for years. It appears if a person dug in to the pile there would be a lot of composted chips. The pile must be five feet high, six or eight feet wide and about twenty feet long. Would this make good compost for a garden? |
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| Maybe. If the wood chips are well digested and what you remove looks like good soil with no hint of the wood chips and smells like good rich earth I would consider using that material in my gardens. |
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- Posted by borderbarb (My Page) on Sun, Feb 26, 12 at 15:26
| In general, I think that wood chips are great for mulch [which in my climate turns into compost in just one season] But that is when the chips come directly from tree service. If you don't know where the chips in that large pile came from, before they were piled there, you might want to see if seeds will sprout and be healthy in this material. Are there weeds/plants growing at edge of this pile? With all the witch's brew of chemicals in common use [& ignorant mis-use], there is just no telling any more what may be in found materials. The variables of risk-taking depend the size of your garden and ability to isolate uncertain materials to check for suspected bad stuff. I had a bad experience with found OM that introduced grubs into my garden ... took years to get rid of .... so I now look carefully at any "free" materials. "Once bitten....", as they say |
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| I'm inclined to agree with borderbarb that a certain amount of caution is warranted. This could be pressure treated scrap from a demolition that is loaded with arsenic, black walnut, or any number of other things. Ordinarily a pile of organic matter that has been sitting for that long would be in a late stage of decomposition and would be hosting a significant amount of growth - if it isn't, I'd want to know why. |
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