5 (Five) Benefits of wood chips :- 1) Improve soil nutrients, 2) Weeds suppression, 3) Maintaining soil moisture, 4) Moderate soil temperature during summer and winter, 5) Holding soil in place preventing erosion. Mr. Scott, thanks you very much for your informative sharing.
@ Gardener Scott 🌿🍀🌲🌲🌲 I am enthusiastic about all you said, but I'm worried about getting a load of wood from trees that were sprayed for a certain insect or caterpillar. I wonder how long it would take for all traces of any pesticide to completely disappear. Otherwise, the wood you spoke about is wonderful, but I always need a few bags of pine bark mulch for up close to the house, just because it smells and looks so heavenly!! There again there's a chance of getting some with traces of pesticide.☹️
Scott: Your videos are absolutely brilliant, perfectly clear and detailed, informative and inspiring. I have been leading garden workshops for almost ten years, and you are clearly one of the best garden educators I have encountered. Thanks so much. Keep up the good work, which is helping hundreds of gardeners understand what they are doing and do an even better job.
Isn’t it crazy that my city charges $20 per load? Wild…. And you have to pick it up and shovel it yourself with a trailer and I just end up calling local arborists who will drop it off for free.
I use arborist chip exclusively at my own house and my flowers and shrubs love it and the bio activity is off the charts, worms everywhere mycorrhizal Fungi, shoot I want to live in my soil. Great content love to watch people that know what they are talking about. Keep up the great work.
Wood encourages mushrooms, the great decompers; great for trees. Compost encourages many good molds, great for many plants. I like to use both methods and sometimes a layer or blend. Adding a sprinkle of mushroom compost prior to mulch, will help balance the beginning nitrogen loss but will balance the phosphorus well. Happy growing!
I mix in different sizes of pine cones and pine needles in regular store mulch-to keep out cats and squirrels-and it makes a huge difference in helping the mulch break down, which yes-improves fertility. So, if you can't get these arbor chips, plenty of people really want to get rid of the needles and cones everywhere. I throw in leaves too. He's right-this combo is perfect! 💗
Even if you do get a loss of nitrogen from the chips either from contact or mixing them in, you can easily amend that loss by adding urine to the garden. It will put a ton of nitrogen back into the soil. I produce 2-3 gallons of urine a day, so when I need a lot of it for nitrogen-loving plants, I have a specific watering can that becomes a de facto urinal for a few days.
Ewwwww. Me too. My dwarf fir/pines love it from time to time. Burt used to apparently water his lemon tree every morning. So that’s at least three of us.
@@gibbyrockerhunter Well, it's actually been my secret elixir for years on dawn redwoods. When people contact me regarding their dawn languishing with certain signs, I tell them to pour a fast food soft drink cup full of it around the base of their tree once a month for three months, If it starts growing too fast, stop for the year. Most are leery at first, but everyone has always emailed me back with glowing reports. So yes, your conifers are going to love it as well.
I have let my husband add to my compost pile but then I recently read that it might not be the best idea if you are on certain or a lot of medications. Thoughts?
@@heidiweinert3260 Yes, like certain cancer meds, but it all boils down to how long it takes for all of those to break down. When in doubt, throw it out! Your doctor would be able to tell you how long that stuff stays active, or your pharmacist. Excellent question!
MULCH IN PLACE! I agree with this video and also really support the practice of mulching in place...that means when you thin, trim, prune, etc just chop the material up and leave it to mulch the area it came from. It is a brilliantly simple and sustainable practice. It will quickly fade and blend in with your chips.
Love your detailed explanations. I was concerned about disease by getting chips and mulch from the community garden but I'm going over tomorrow. My garden will be happier.
You answered all of my questions, I was quite concerned with introducing foreign bugs and eggs in larvae of infestation into the property such as Japanese beetles. 🐞🦗🌳🌲🌴🍁 Thank you very much for this video information that's exactly what I need to know & appreciate it very much👍👩🌾🇨🇦
Thanks! I never knew about Chipdrop. Signed up and within a couple weeks we now have enough to get a good start on keeping weeds out. I can use the hours I save from weeding to watch more of your videos!
Great video. I have been using wood chips in the garden beds for years and have observed massive awesome results. I also deposit all my grass clipping in the less utilized areas of my yard and use the wood chips to hide the decaying grass and add carbon content to the “green” content to balance the compost mix ratio and thus break down the free nutrients faster. I mostly appreciate the free wood chip application site. This is a fantastic resource to actually get entire trees that have been chipped. Bagged chips are mostly just the outer bark, which is still good, but a chipped tree is optimum. Thanks for your grassroots effort to impact our earth in a sustainable and provide an earth far better than we started with. I am so glad to see people like you show that nature can provide a net gain to our human efforts, when we do the things that nature does without us messing it up. The forest does not have a sprinkler system or bags of fertilizer being spread out, and it appears to be majestic to me.
Hi woodchips are great, I first learned about it from the back to Eden with Paul Gautschi, on utube I've had 2 drop offs and it's great for plant's and I put them on my plant pot's.
So excited to have gotten 10 cu yards of wood chips dropped off earlier this week. I am using it to gradually kill off my lawn and build the soil.I got the same last year too. I will say though that in my dry California weather wood chips take a long time (many years) to fully break down. But I am in no hurry. Seeing the explosion of mycorrhizal fungii in the soil from the wood chips last year makes me happy! It is vastly improving my clayey soil, and what used to be dry and cracking earth just last year is starting to turn into black gold. One huge benefit also is that wood chips are typically safe since, unlike green waste compost or manure, there usually aren't pesticides and herbicides to worry about. And think about those nutrients that the deep tree roots mined and brought into the tree trunk and branches and leaves. Woodchips are truly amazing for your garden!
I feel like the luckiest gardener #1 getting truckloads of free fresh wood chips delivered anytime I need them from a tree service contracted by my power company. And #2, every day getting 4 to 10 big boxes of expired produce from my local grocer to mix with the chips. =Free Black Gold 🌱👨🏼🌾🌾
Hi! Since I found your channel this past weekend I have been binge watching!! I retired last year in August with full intentions of starting a garden. I finally have some land of my own and all the time in the world. With all the other You Tubers my mind was going every which way and I could not get started!! Then came You!! You calmed my mind down and helped me focus. So if I won't eat it, I won't grow it!! (At least for now.) This video is the one that gave me the push to at least get started. I have a delivery of Chip Drop on the way. (They don't give you a specific time so when it gets here it's here!!) I will take picks and let you know how it's going. Starting with raised beds and tires for containers. So while I wait on the chips, I'm starting a worm farm!! Thank you for giving me the push and the confidence to know I Can do this! Your voice is so calming. I'm going to rewatch this video while I wait. (And more of your other videos). God Bless you Sir!
I love all the fungi the rotting wood chips contain. I feel like those decomposing wood chips host bacteria and fungi that benefit my garden. Bad thing: the snails and stink bugs hide under the wood chips.
last week chipdrop gave me 19 cubic yards. it was awesome! a lot of neighbors came to help with the load. now i have a huge pile in my front yard, it's heating up, can't wait till my composting thermometer so i can see how hot it is. i'm going to sharing your video with other neighbors, hopefully they'll get on board so we can take turns hosting chipdrops in our neighborhood.
Been using Arborist chips for years. Xeriscaped my front and back yard with chip and stone. Received may rave reviews and it was FREE. Also works great as weed control on back and side lane of my property. Also used it in my dog run. Neutralizes urine and fecal smells.
Gardening for many years but only recently discovered the benefits of wood chips! But, I love your explaination on 'cover' vs 'amendment'... big difference in what the do in your soil & take away from plant growth! BUT..the benefits..weed suppression, moisture retention, erosion control, slow soil amendment FAR outweigh and are better than tillage/disturb & uncovered soil!
Great video, but know your source or you are bringing home poluuted contaminated chips, be careful, this is true with anything you bring in. Blessings and keep sharing.
I talked the arborist doing my neighbors trees into dumping their full load in my driveway. I know the trees and their health and was happy to get cherry Laurel and camphor chip for my yard, garden, driveway and Chicken run for my Florida Sandy soil.
This is why I bought a used chipper from a tree service. I trim a lot of trees and also get landscape waste dropped off for a fee, which I chip into mulch I use to compost my property. Have chipped tons of landscape waste and spread chips all over the 5 acres here. It is also a good idea to have a tractor or skid steer if you deal with a lot of chips.
Weed suppression is a must..great video! Excited to check out your other videos! Free wood chips definitely available in many places. I love your emphasis on "for FREE!"
Arborist here...very good info and all very important assets of wood chips. I'd like to add another benefit to the list. Adding 4"-6" of Arborist chips under the dripline of trees (preferably mostly hardwood) does all the things you mentioned but also eliminates root scalping from lawn tractors. Just make sure to keep the mulch off the root flares (or root crowns). In a month or two you'll have earthworms galore, time release organic fertilizer, and vastly improved soil texture. Also I'd avoid cypress and cedar chips. They're touted by marketers for insect resistance near homes but they're both woods that are rot resistant and rotting is exactly what we want with chip mulch.
Sure. The mold or fungus is part of the decomposition process that will add the nutrients of the chips into soil. To reduce it, you can aerate the pile by "fluffing" the chips with a garden fork or spade.
Oh man, Scott thank you for the Chip Drop suggestion! I never knew!! I’m so excited, we’re gardening on a budget and this is just what I needed in time to prep my garden beds for next spring!
I hope ChipDrop works out for you! It didn't for me, but eventually I just happened to be driving past a tree crew at work and formed a friendly relationship with them directly. Keep your eyes peeled for that; it can turn out fantastic if you just network a little. The crew I talked to was thrilled to drop their fresh chips at my place rather than take them to the dump. When I mentioned that i wanted mulch for my gardens they knew exactly what I was talking about and they were very happy to help.
@@kathynix6552 I've gotten many loads of arborist chips through chipdrop and it's always been great. I would never ask for a photo first. In our area free chips are in high demand and that would be an instant disqualifier if you asked for photos of your free chips first. Re. photos, perhaps you're thinking of commercially purchased chips rather than free arborist wood chips? With chipdrop / free arborist chips you can specify that you don't want logs.
Several weeks ago a large tree was getting a major trim so the questions came out about the wood chips....I ended up with a small load of them which I will happily be using over time....so happy to get a load dropped of on my driveway. It was from a maple tree!
Hope you have a big yard. I got a drop of about 20 to 25 yards and I'm having a heck of a time hiding the excess. Don't get me wrong, I am happy I have this problem In fact it should be called GetChipAwesome.com
I get 2 cubic meters for $50 from a local arborist. Lasts me a couple of years, and the last 1/4 of the load has turned to fine black compost by the time I get to it.
Thanks for the video, v have different mathods of farming. in my country (india🇮🇳) I never saw that mulching on the soil, but I m going to use that in my farms🚜🐄🌾, your videos are helping me to learn more about healthy soil. Thank you again. 🙏
We have a small wood chipper and have also embraced the wood chip concept. We are clearing forest to make orchard, as well as clearing to reduce fire danger. Our best wood is milled to lumber. Second best becomes firewood. And the "scrap" becomes chips. We're currently using it in our berry patches, and LOVING the results
Modern Homesteading did a soil analysis on this. Tilled plants no compost vs woodchips on second garden plot after two years. The woodchips plot had almost no nitrogen but did have other nutrients at moderate levels. I think woodchips are mostly for our convenience of weed suppression.
There are intelligent ways to account for the nitrogen loss that may come from accidental mixing of wood chips and soil. For example when I work my mostly-annual beds I add composted chicken manure that I buy in bags, and that is very rich in nitrogen as well as lots of bacterial life for my soil. Blood meal is another easy option to add nitrogen.
Watching from south of France ... been researching on buying my own wood chip machine as have quite a lot of grounds including woodland that I am always clearing and end up having huge bonfires... loved this video and as soon as c19 lock is over off out to buy a machine! Thanks for all the insights! One new subscriber happy!
I got one my neighbor was tossing out last Spring. Works well enough but it takes hours to get a few cart loads when I can get 100 carts from a typical truck load so I'm may get rid of 5hp chipper. I burn my brush piles and quench the coals for "biochar" for the most part.
@@karenlatham4053 Understood. Nothing clean organic leaves my land, I'd pile logs and brush to rot first, shovel some dirt on 'em to speed the process, way outback, sort of ultra slow composting, it works but takes a few yr.s. Also can be used as bottom fill for high raised beds, I'm saving large limbs for that...use some 6 to 8" diameter limbs for temporary low raised bed rimming for containment and definition. I'm just out of city limits for good reason. Learned how to stack burn pile taller than wide using canted in limbs around the outside, high density 8 to 10 ft high, top down ignition, DRY material....hot mostly smoke free burn. Several times per yr. I simply have too much to chip and half of it wouldn't even fit in the chipper. A pile that takes 90+ min to burn would take me days to chip. Plus I get a couple cart loads of biochar, a permanent forms of soil enhancement, of course white ash is also used. It's ALL good fun. :D
So glad you mentioned Get Chip Drop. It is one of the best sources I know. Make sure to give good directions so you don't have to quickly move a drop off the neighbors property.
The irony of the whole nitrogen-sink is that nitrogen readily washes away - unless you have lots of carbon on the soil surface. The microclimate also (by fostering lots of soil life) allows you to scavenge nitrogen and keep every last atom cycling around your system. Cut a lawn growing in dead soil and leave the clippings - a bunch of N exits your system as nitrous oxides. Do the same thing with living soil and your worms come up and pull the clippings back down and eat them, cycling the N back through.
The nitrogen does washes away, but not unless you have carbon on the soil : it's unless you carbon IN the soil, taking the form of humus. Humus stores carbon and nitrogen, and releases slowly when it mineralises. However, humus does come from woody material being eaten by bacteria, mushrooms and worms. Which is why people should mulch with wood chips, straw or dead leaves, and should stop thinking you can "mulch" with pure compost.
The fence builders nextdoor cut down a bunch of trees three years ago . Recently , this week I went to get me some of the wood chips and the chips and chainsaw dust had completely broken down to a brown soil 2, 3 inches deep. I was shocked how fast they converted to soil mant ifthe trees were cedars
I love wood chips to improve my sandy soil. Here in the south you have to be careful though because fire ants will nest in a pile of wood chips. Then you stick your shovel in to get some and a zillion fire ants come roaring out at you.
Thanks for mentioning the fire ant issue. In nature, you can't do just one thing; everything is subject to the law of unintended consequences. 4" of wood chips MIGHT generate fewer fire ant nests. BTW, MINT disrupts ants' scent trails.
Well done! Been preaching this as a Master Gardener for almost 40 years. I've seen people buy the bark chip mulch, and when you get a "toad strangler/gully washer" they become little boats that float away
Thank you again for a good video. Will this increase the slater/roly-poly and the cockroach population who use chips as their habitat. I don't mind slaters but cockroaches eeek me out. Did you notice an increase?
Luckily, my area doesn't have a cockroach problem, but there should be an increase in other insect activity. Better yet, the mulch attracts many beneficial insects and animals to the garden, so it eventually evens out.
I use wood chips in all my Perennial Gardens. I also spread wood chips in the chicken run in the Spring. The chickens dig through them all year and I mix the half composted mixture w/ enough greens to finish composting them over the Winter. This allows me to produce about 3 yards of compost a year.
please be aware that chip drop can mean a VERY LARGE AMOUNT. however once you are signed onto chip drop you can also look for someone else who got some, and wants to share.
I have used wood chips for many years. Excellent advice. I also get the municipal wood chips and run them thru my old leaf chipper shredder. Chops it up even finer to add to my manure/compost pile. Only takes about 3 months to break down to usable compost. The larger chips that I use straight from the municipal landfill usually last about two to three years in my very wet environment. Good video. Subscribing.
Where are you located? Where I work we have a natural mulch. It’s pretty fine but it has tons of different things in it. Leaves limbs some plant material. Lots of things. It makes amazing compost
your every video is so amazing , explains everything in great detail and so methodologically logical :D they are mind broadening as well - like to have city provide materials for gardening :) you teach more than just about gardening
Thank you for this information. I was concerned about "diseased" chips, but you clarified how it only affects trees of the same species, and also not to be affected for your vegetable gardens. Now I will not listen to the nay-sayers! Because they probably don't even have a garden!
Just when I thought I knew everything, I am still learning! I love your videos! I am eager to check out the website you mentioned about free wood chips. My issue is getting them to my small city property, as I do not drive, but next question is, how much can I get, lol. I live alone, am partially disabled, but might be up to the challenge as my soul here is lousy! Might be worth the sweat in the end! Thank you!
Thanks, Emma. Chip drop unloads up to a full truck so it may be a lot of wood chips. One problem is that you you have to take it all. There may be a lot of sweat involved. 🙂
What happens to a full cubic yard chip drop. It start composting or loosing it size immediately. It soaks up all the moisture it gets. Your will most likely love it no matter. You can put them in a large tote. 20 or 30 gallon or so. You can grow in these. 4 inches of potting soil on top would probably could start immediately. If you have a bare spot in your yard, put it there. It will never be bare again.
Thank God I watched this video to the end 😆 and looked at the description box and clicked on the chip drop website. Cause we need this in our garden. Tired of pulling up weeds, cant wait to lay down 6 INCHES 😁🤣 of wood chips.
Wow! Again another great vid Gardner Scott! I was blessed to have an arborist with a big boon next door in Mich. I had him drop all his pine jobs by the barn. Now in FL. i just hooked up with a tree trimmer, who is happy to do the same! They are happy to have a place to dump it free! After soil prep. I’d say woodchips are next! It’s enriched the soil, and saved countless hours of weeding! You give the BEST advice! I give your links to anyone considering a garden! 👍
That’s so amazing to have a wood chip service like that. Where I live no one does wood chips nor does anyone even know what wood chips or mulch is. It’s so ridiculous.
@@GardenerScott In our area we have a wood chip fired biofuel electric plant... so chips have a "value" here. We must out bid the electric plant if you want a delivery (Been a chip drop member for a year.. not one response)
Great video. My neighbor put a sign on his pile of woodchips. FREE. I've been over there many many times. People are constantly looking at me gathering the wood chips. I can't believe people aren't in line grabbing all they can.
Sections of my property would never grow grass due to bad soil. I tried everything for 3 years. Compost, fertilizers, soil amendments etc. Grass would never grow. Had wood chips dropped off for the garden and placed them on the dead grass section as to not kill another section of grass. The pile sat for a couple of years as it was used as needed. When it was all gone i tossed grass seed on it again. Grass came up strong and has never thinned out.
I had six pecan trees trimmed this last year and did not know. I should’ve kept the chips. I am kicking myself every day. Because now I am waiting and waiting for somebody to bring me chips. I’ve tried hitting up every tree trimmer in the area that uses a chipper and even signed up with Chipdrop but so far no takers.!
check with your neighbors and/or local facebook groups to see if you can split one. Where I live there's a local gardening group that often trades plants, seeds, labor, etc.
