Survival Gardening with David The Good
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Visit to a friend using wood chips broken down as his base for his garden…
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Visit to a friend using wood chips broken down as his base for his garden…
Yesterday I put my compost separator to work, and I got to visit a friend of mine that we screen out good potting soil from 4 year old broken down wood chips. He used tin cans from food products with wood chips to make his starter plants filled with the wood chips he screened. he would add just a bit of nitrogen fertilizer to give them a boost at the start. We made about 5 wheel barrel loads of starter mix for this years crop. His plants always look so healthy
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23 Replies
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Cool! What kind of wood chips?
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They come from the power company so mostly oak I would imagine. Once they have broken down, they do make a great plant starter.
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Awesome. I gather wood mulch from the woods on our property. It makes great mulch. I’ve not tried to start plants in them except for the “dirt” around the bigger pieces.
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Yeah I like to put rotten logs near the base of trees. I like to encourage fungal growth.
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Be careful using wood chips. Think disease!
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I think earthworms, fungi, and tons of produce. You should see the harvest he has from his figs, oranges grapefruit.
I did kill an orange tree by putting too much wood chips at the base of it. A bit of breathing room for the roots does wonders. like 1 -2 feet from base.
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It’s a common problem you see often by people. That is to say; choking off a tree’s ability by stacking stuff around its base.
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Yes, they call it the “volcano effect”…. death to a tree.
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Cool. re: all the concerns about this or that in the material, I don’t think any place is toxic gick free any more. We do the best with what is available, don’t add to the toxicity and in the end, the proof is in the growing. If everything is growing great, that is about as much as we can hope for.
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Yeah, I think we can use common sense, but I see the same people complaining about toxic gick going to fast food restaurants and eating junk food as if it is going out of style. 🙂
I have gone to making my own compost as the EPA has approved bio solids to be added to compost. The more control I have over my inputs the better. Each of us draws that line somewhere as how good is good enough.
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All our chips come from tree trimming. Don’t use treated wood for chips, yes trees get sprayed I understand that
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Isn’t the whole premise of Back to Eden and Paul Gautachi’s method based on using wood chips? And the first rule of permaculture is no bare dirt. I’ve spent the past year hauling wood chips around the entire property from the piles that a tree service drops off. I’ve seen a difference already in the water absorption and it’s actually building infrastructure into my sandy Florida soil. I’m a believer!
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Yes, that is true Paul started with wood chips, I run a group on MeWe for Back to Eden Gardening, and Deep Mulch method.
I have found that the magic starts when you combine nitrogen with the wood chips from like chicken manure. One needs to have a constant supply of wood chips to really make them work, I have been moving toward growing my own mulch with Bolivian sunflowers and leaves here in Florida. These provide a constant supply of cover for the soil which I have an abundance of. I don’t always have a constant wood chips myself, but I do have a constant supply of leaves.
I did go whole hog into wood chips… It is a good exercise program 🙂
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I agree, best to not roto till the chips in. Better to give them 4 years to break down then use them. or do it in about 1 year by using the wood chips in your chicken run. Chickens + wood chips = garden gold.
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Another good point.
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Our whole yard is chip. We have no grass. We did it 3 years ago, now it’s time to take the top layer off then rake the rest, about 4 inches deep. Put the old down then add new to the top
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If that is true, then don’t use them and then grow your own compost. This is why I don’t take free horse manure until I have tested it for grazon / herbicides.. I don’t have a steady supply of wood chips my friend does and his plants do wonderful. But yeah if you know they spray don’t use. But ours come from trees touching power lines high up in the air.
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I’m less concerned about what is sprayed on the roadside that may be taken up by trees that are 20+ years old than that which is sprayed on annuals in a pasture/field. The concentration of any toxic gick would be higher in the annuals, and there is likely a greater variety of sprays and more frequent spraying on the pasture/field.
There is likely no place toxin free anymore, it’s a matter of what and how much.