Fresh mulch advice needed please.

[Carriehelene]

We cut down 4 trees, and chipped all the branches. Have a 7ft pile of mulch for my plants now. What is the best way to use them? I was thinking for now put down cardboard in the walkways and cover with mulch. But what about between tomato rows, can I do there too, or will it harm the tomatoes? Where else can I safely put it? I know it can't touch the plants or it will burn the plants.

[Cole_Robbie]

I think you can do anything except mix it into the soil. The cardboard is optional, depending upon if you want to get by with a thinner layer of the wood chips.

[digsdirt]

Honestly IMO fresh wood chips have no role in the vegetable garden for several reasons. So the best thing you can do with it is stockpile it for a year and keep it wet. Makes a great soil amendment and mulch combined for next year.

But I know many don't want to wait that long. So using it for the pathways is fine. Between the plants themselves, not so much. Yes, keep it away from direct contact with the plants but even when it isn't tilled in - which is a big no - it can do some N binding. Of course you can compensate for that by adding extra nitrogen but it complicates the process. Plus it has little moisture retention or weed suppression value.

Plus if this is a bed that will be tilled come fall it will complicate the tilling process and you will have to incorporate a substantial amount of N at the same time.

So your choice but if you have the space and the patience it will pay you back if you can just do the paths this years and stockpile the rest.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[Redbaron]

I have heard of problems using it fresh too. I usually use aged chips, at least a few months. Now last year I did use fresh. It was OK. Didn't hurt, but didn't help much either, not like aged helps. The difference between me and digsdirt is I am exclusively no till and he uses tillage. So that very likely will effect the end result.

If you want to speed the aging process up? Then layer 3 inch layers alternated with 3 inch absolutely fresh mowed green grass. Soak each layer. Turn every three or 4 days and soak again. (I do it when I mow next and add layers of fresh mowed grass each time) It wont be compost in a month, but it will be close enough partially composted to use in your garden.

[Carriehelene]

Thanks all Dave, good to see you here.

[clkeiper]

When they are aged they add moisture retention value to the soil. Green is really only good for the paths. I would add cardboard just to suppress the weeds.

[HydroExplorer]

I pretty much agree with cole from an nitrogen perspective because nitrogen lockout is localized around where the wood is located. If you till the wood chips into your bed you will create a nitrogen desert and little will grow there.

One concern I would have with using fresh wood chips near plants is that the decomposition process will create a lot of heat. The wood curing process also produces a lot of heat. You can definitely heat stress your plants by using fresh wood chips too close to the roots of your plants.

You might be able to grow oyster mushrooms on your wood chips to break them down into spongy wood. Oyster mushrooms are REAL easy to grow. If you grow them on the ground you'll probably get a ton of earthworms so you won't have the nutrient burn problems associated with mushroom soil.

I haven't tried growing oyster mushrooms on fresh wood chips yet but I've grown them on paper and it was super easy.

[Mike723]

If it were chipped bark it'd say it'd be great for the perennial beds etc, but the wood itself adds very little if any nutritional value.. It would help to add organic matter to the soil (improving texture etc) but that would take a long while and tie up N in the process (as mentioned). If I had it I would use it for paths (above cardboard or newspaper) and throw the surplus in the compost pile.. Just keep in mind that it'll cool the compost without adding an alternative N source - plenty of grass clippings, alfalfa meal, kitchen scraps or even some fish emulsion etc...

[Worth1]

Here is my take as if it matters.

I rent a chipper when I cut down trees in the winter.
I let the pile sit for a year during this year mushrooms start to grow in it.
Depending on the mushroom the first bunch will break down fresh wood chips Then another kind will take over and so on.
Once they are broken down for the year then I will put them in the garden
This is the way I use wood chips.
I refuse to cut down anymore trees until I get some Shee Talky mushroom spore plugs.


Worth

[Carriehelene]

Another question. If I cover the the mulch in the pathways with black plastic (after watering it down) will that speed up decomposition?

[HydroExplorer]

Originally Posted by Carriehelene

Another question. If I cover the the mulch in the pathways with black plastic (after watering it down) will that speed up decomposition?

That will make all of the wood mulch decompose. Anything that doesn't get hit by light will decompose. The rate of decomposition is partially based on the availability of nitrogen because the stuff that breaks things down temporarily uses nitrogen to do it. The nitrogen becomes available again once the compostable material is processed.

The bacteria that break stuff down get killed by UV. The worms that break it down further after the bacteria are done avoid light. This is the same reason why tilling causes soil compaction because the things that break things down and loosen soil are dead.

If you're trying to decompose stuff, mix some manure in with it before covering it over. The amount of manure you need is based on how much carbon is in the stuff you're breaking down. Hard wood needs the most manure.

I'll link you a book about composting that you might find helpful. It talks about some of the micronutrients that are used in decomposition and how to naturally add them to your compost to cause hot composting very rapidly. Don't do this near your plants because the heat will certainly kill them. If I remember right, yarrow and nettle are really good for this.
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/QR/QRToC.html

[digsdirt]

If I cover the the mulch in the pathways with black plastic (after watering it down) will that speed up decomposition?

Not sure I understand. Why would you want the paths mulch to decompose quickly? The whole purpose of mulching paths is appearance and to prevent weedy paths so slow decomp is usually the goal there.

Dave

[Carriehelene]

Thank you Hydro.
Dave, I'm worried it won't decompose quickly enough to be mixed in the soil next spring, or even possibly late this fall. My end goal is to do everything possible to build my soils health. Don't know if you saw my post on GW's "things I've learned" thread, but I've managed to pretty much destroy my soil. No worms, no nothin in there.
I have a tumble composter that I've started using, added some of the wood chips in there, but with the HUGE pile of them, it's gonna take just shy of forever to use them all, even with freshening the walkways next year. I'm trying to learn all I can as fast as I can.

[HydroExplorer]

Originally Posted by Carriehelene

Thank you Hydro.
Dave, I'm worried it won't decompose quickly enough to be mixed in the soil next spring, or even possibly late this fall. My end goal is to do everything possible to build my soils health. Don't know if you saw my post on GW's "things I've learned" thread, but I've managed to pretty much destroy my soil. No worms, no nothin in there.
I have a tumble composter that I've started using, added some of the wood chips in there, but with the HUGE pile of them, it's gonna take just shy of forever to use them all, even with freshening the walkways next year. I'm trying to learn all I can as fast as I can.

Sounds like you tilled.

It's easier to fix than you probably think. If you work on it now you will have soft soil next year. I had some soil that was so hard that it was almost like rock. If you jumped on a shovel to dig into it you would hurt your feet (hard red clay). It's soft this year.

Just layer cardboard over basically everything. The more layers the better so far as I've seen. I know 6 isn't too many. Then just cover that over with wood chips or whatever (anything that blocks light and lets water pass through). The next year the cardboard will be gone and your soil will be soft and full of life. From there you still might not have enough nutrients in the soil so compost your leaves this fall and use that mulch when you do your planting.

Also, I would recommend against using weed barrier cloth. That hinders some of the microbial activity that happens in your soil. You will still get weeds if you sheet mulch but your ground will be so soft that they'll just come right out.

I had the same problem. My worst 2 years of gardening to date are found on my youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgb...R_BCY-w/videos). Look how bad my soil was in 2014 (when I dug hugelkultur bed #1). Look at what that bed is growing like this year. I haven't fertilized it at all. I literally threw the plants in there, tossed leaf mulch on top and they grew.

I tried one foliar feed but as far as I can tell it didn't do anything. Actually, I didn't do enough research on the main fertilizer I was using and it didn't dissolve into solution. I pretty much never fertilize so I'm not very good at doing it lol.

[digsdirt]

Then these paths you will be mulching are IN the garden itself rather than outside the bed. That makes a big difference. I thought you were talking about mulching paths between or around beds.

In that case I wouldn't put any of it in the garden. Just stockpile it and let it age for a year. Stir some alfalfa pellets in with it to speed it up. You can even cover it with black plastic if you want but you risk it turning anaerobic and killing off beneficial microbes as HE said above. So I wouldn't. If I had to for some reason 'd use perforated landscape fabric instead. Better to have access to air and water, and stirred/turned as much as possible.

As for fixing your soil. Don't put all your eggs in this one basket because this will be a slow process and there are faster ways to do it. I won't go so far as to say that tilling is what killed your soil. Many folks till without killing their soil so it isn't quite as evil a process as some maintain.

And it takes a combination of many things to kill soil as you listed in that other discussion. But the fastest easiest way to fix it is to mix in 6-8" of fresh multi-component compost (preferably with some manure mixed in it). And unless you have an industrial sized compost organization going you can't make enough in a reasonable amount of time. So find some place to buy some if possible. You can start applying it right now in between the rows and around all the plants without any worries of nitrogen binding on anything else.

Dave