Mulch- Wood Chips

[Durgan]

http://durgan.org/2016/April 2016/25...016 Mulch/HTML 25 April 2016 Mulch
All vegetation in my garden is heavily mulched each year with about one year old wood chips. I purchase at $10.00 per yard plus $30.00 delivery and require ten yards to complete the garden area. It is transported via wheelbarrow to the required area. Each cubic yard is about 7 wheelbarrows full, so a total of 70 loads. The purpose of the chips in my case is to retain moisture. The main vegetable garden is completely covered when the plants get a reasonable size. After the garden is finished in the Fall the chips are rototilled in with a bit of urea, nitrogen, to assist in composting. The chips are almost completely composted come Spring.


http://www.durgan.org/URL/?DEALJ June 2015 Wood Chip Mulch

[berryman]

That looks real nice Durgan.
Have you noticed any problems with bugs in the chips? When I use a lot in the garden I get lots of earwigs and potato bugs crawling around especially at night.

[Durgan]

I detect no downside from using the wood chip mulch. I started using it in quantity starting about six or so years ago. My main use is to retain moisture. The other touted benefits are of minor interest in my case. Like weed control.

The mulch is certainly not a home for any bugs. I don't have many earwigs and manage to control the potato bugs by physically picking them, since the host plants are few in number.

This year I have now most of the garden covered in mulch before planting. I just scrape it back to plant. I need a few more yards, used ten so far, which will be picked up half a yard each trip in the van. I had the initial ten delivered to the driveway.

I am now a complete advocate of mulch. The premise being in my case that bare earth is for all intents and purposes non-productive. If not protected from the Sun the soil becomes very hard. I even plant the rows closer than normal so the space between rows is shaded by the plants as much as possible. For plant spacing I leave adequate between plants in the row.