DEAR AMOR: Something I learned this year: starting a garden can be nearly free, if you plan ahead. You don’t need a raised bed and you don’t need top quality soil. Call a local arborist/tree company and ask them if they will deliver wood chips to your driveway. They’ll often do it for free, and gratefully, as it means they won’t have to pay to dump them elsewhere. Use a weed whacker or lawnmower to cut the grass in your desired garden location low, and lay down a 12- to 18-inch layer of wood chips directly on top. Leave it for a few months (preferably 3-6; longer is better), then dig through it and plant directly in the soil underneath. The chips can be moved to start a bed elsewhere, or can be left in place as mulch. On a related note, a lot of people start their beds by laying down either newspaper or cardboard on top of the grass before covering it with either soil or wood chips. This is not only unnecessary, but harmful to the soil biota and ecology underneath because it restricts water flow and gas exchange. — Jessica
DEAR JESSICA: Thank you for sharing your new garden discoveries with us. It is impossible to enjoy gardening without planning ahead. One thing I relish in the fall and winter is that I am able to find the time to make plans for my upcoming spring planting. If I do not prepare for that, I will find myself behind schedule as I will be preoccupied in building garden structures, outsmarting obnoxious weeds, and finding the right seeds or seedlings.
In St. Joseph County Grange fairground in Centreville, Michigan, they have a display garden maintained by Master Gardeners in their state that my family and I love to visit from time to time. Beautiful garden. I haven’t been there for a couple of years but that garden display is what comes to my mind when you mentioned wood chips for the garden. Their wood chips look so thick that it becomes impossible for a weed to grow out of it.
As for myself, I have redefined the meaning of a gardener. A gardener is not a plant servant who constantly hand waters, weeds, tills, and wears muddy boots, working tirelessly under the sun. A gardener is someone who has a piece of earth and seeds to grow. In between seed time and harvest, a gardener turns the hydrant on, and with a camera on hand and not a spade, becomes lost in a world of wonder: snapping pictures of robin’s nests, tree frogs, butterflies, and bees among the blooming flowers that will become fruits or vegetables.
Mulching with wood chips is a must for a carefree garden. Without it, we will be pulling weeds by hand endlessly. Pulling weeds will only encourage more growth when weed roots are brought out to the surface. How are we supposed to enjoy gardening like that?
The use of cardboard will not create an ideal natural forest-like ecosystem underneath. It will be “restricting water flow and gas exchange” and is a good invitation to termites. Wood chips made from cedar species are natural repellents to termites, ants, clothes moths and carpet beetles.
Here comes the warning from Purdue Extension: “Fresh wood chips are known to be very acidic and detrimental to plant growth.”
It happened to mine this year. My new transplant of eggplants and okras had a good start and was growing very well in my garden. I had fall leaves as mulch from the previous year. They had begun bearing fruit and plenty of flowers. Just then I added some more fresh wood shavings to further suppress any weeds.
After that, my vigorous young vegetables seem to stop growing. Before long some of them died. Those that survived took a while to become energetic fruit-bearing vegetables again. But the very dry summer this year did not prevent a much later bounteous harvest because those plants received a good amount of mulch that makes their growing environment desirable and moist.
As new wood chips will be fatal to our plants, we should not just be calling some local arborist/tree company for wood chips delivery to our driveway IF we do not have that window of six months or more for the chips to age.
We can, nevertheless, take advantage of those free seasoned wood chips from our very own city landfill for immediate use on established gardens. They have tons there waiting for us. It is easy to tell which file of wood chips are old and which ones are new.
However, when taking wood chips at the site, take the ones at the surface. Do not go deep in the pile. The inner wood chips had heated up as they begin to break down as a compost. It becomes a sour mulch, which is the more acidic. It, too, will injure our young plants if not given a little time to cool down.
Wood chips delivered at home should not be piled too high and stored for future use. They will become a sour mulch as well. Spread them in the garden area right away. For new garden beds, it takes time to suppress and kill the weeds underneath those newly laid-in mulch before they can be ready for planting.
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November 25, 2020 at 12:00PM
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Mulching with new wood chips can be fatal to plants - KPCnews.com
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