I sure wish I had learned some of this earlier in my life. I am now 80 with a few medical conditions. I also wish I had learned gardening would be so enjoyable. Too much time trying to make the almighty dollar. I have a 30 by 30 garden that I am using compost from a municipal source that is free. Probably not the best compost but i don’t feel I have enough years left to work compost for 2 or 3 years. I will just keep on keeping on till I can’t anymore. I am not trying to solicit anyone feeling sorry for me but you younger folks get busy. Gardening is so rewarding , even with its failures. God Bless all of you. Y’all havagudun from this ole cowboy. Thanks Charles.
What a lovely comment. Even at this stage of your life you are finding the joy of gardening and that is amazing, I wish you many years of harvests and health. Thanks for the encouragement to younger people.
Hope you're doing well, stories like this make me glad I discovered gardening at such an early age. May your tomatoes be ripe, your worms happy, and your compost rich!
I’ve been wood chipping my garden in the Back to Eden style for 5yrs now. This first 2 were like you said. Lots of yellowing early and needed to add some blood meal to compensate. Now I see the breakdown going faster each year as I layer on another 2-4 inches per year. When I dig down now I find 5-8 inches of beautiful soil and lots more worm and fungal activity. Adding manure top dressing helps too.
I have done the same...year three on some beds and 4 in others...my soil is awesome...will see how the garden grows this year....blood meal...great idea and will try some this year...wished I lived closer to people who garden like this....could share ideas along the way..
I have started a half allotment plot with the Back to Eden approach. The soil is looking great after around only 9 months, I went around 4-6 inches deep to start. Having a complete 'mare with bindweed and some extent deep rooted perennial spinach / green chard! I have layered cardboard over the worst areas and recovered and gone 12" deep in others. Any hints or suggestions would be great!
How can it be that I have reached 57 years of age, attended three universities and 1 agricultural college, and this was the first time I had ever heard the phrase 'dog vomit slime mould'. Thank you Adam - every day is a learning day!!!
How do you prevent the slime mold (nicer mental image ha ha ha) from spreading across the entirety of home acres. I got a load of arborist wood chips last spring that must have had some spores in it and found it showing up in odd places across my property. Presumably spread by the wind. Does it eventually go away?
I have built garden beds with zero dirt at start...just building soil with compost and wood chips and what I can scavenge. My results are looking awesome....have changed clay soil into really nice composted garden soil with wood chips as a starter base...moldy ones....wanted the fungus and microbioda in my raised garden beds...
We use new woodchip for all the paths around our veggie patch, which amounts to about 5 or 6 tons. It is placed over a geotextile membrane, and makes a great path. After about 3 years it has broken down too much to still be a good path, so we dig it out and use it as a mulch around the rest of the garden, and bring in some more woodchips for the paths. So no heaps to manage. Our feet and barrow tyres break up the bigger chips, and by the time we spread it on the garden it is full of worms and in a beautiful state.
I recently saw a compost pile made with a small coil of chicken wire in the center to help aerate. It was left in place for the duration to ensure the material does not get heavy and cave in. The gardener did not have a hole in the bottom nor was it on a pallet, which is brilliant. I may try that next time. Thank you! I get my wood chips at the city from a gigantic mound. There has to be some amazing compost at the bottom of that heap. Wish I could get my hands on it.
Fantastic Charles, I’ve always used my wood chips from my garden. I started getting my trailer filled at a local tree surgeon yard about 7 years ago after watching back to Eden videos.
I use chips as mulch wherever I can, but don't dig it in, as Charles recommended. I have 5 acres that I manage all by myself -- several gardens, tree planting, and transplanting of seedlings and shrubs I get from friends., so don't have the time to get too elaborate. I try to keep things simple and make compost piles on the ground and turn them over with a pitchfork when I get around to it several times a year. At present I have six different heaps in progress. Everything eventually breaks down! Recently, I used a thin layer of homemade compost around a lot of forsythia I transplanted a few years ago, and covered that with an inch or so of new chips. The compost should feed the soil and the chips, because they were new, will take a long time to break down so I won't have to replace them any time soon. I'm also using homemade compost on top of all my planting beds in the vegetable gardens. This channel has taught me a lot and I really appreciate Charles sharing his experience.
This is a helpful comment Bill and thank you for sharing your interesting results. I'm impressed how you manage 5 acres on your own and it shows what we can do when we get a bit organised and understand the processes.
I make my own wood chip from my woodland. Mostly willow. My chipper makes very small & thin chip. What a difference between chip from trees in leaf to chip in dormant season. Salix candida is a large leaved & very soft hardwood willow & this is the majority of my summer chip. The fresh result by volume is about 75-80% leaf to woody matter. We had a mega drought (by Scottish standards) last year, about 3 months no rain. I used this leafy chip as mulch around veg as the watering issue was becoming dire. I also sowed oriental greens seed straight on the bed and just covered with the leafy mix. In both ways it worked fabulously and by late autumn the leafy parts of this chip were completely gone. I was left with very little actual woody matter chip lying on the bed. I scraped the loose bits to the side & covered all the beds with an inch layer of seaweed let to break down & then a few months later some compost. We shall see how this season goes. Thanks for showing us your results with your wood chip composting experimentation.
Having seaweed as a free resource is a real blessing. You’re very fortunate. I too have resorted to mulching with (one year old) woodchips on leafy green growing beds during prolonged drought if my top dressing compost has broken down. Needs must when in dire seasons. 👍🏻
@@amandar7719 Seaweed is a real game changer I've come to find out. I've started using it in large quantities over the past few years now & my garden has never been better. My partner works in a seaweed (edible) harvesting operation and I get the factory floor sweepings of the stuff that has been washed & slowly air dried so I have access to massive quantities of it. Yes, there wasn't much more I could do last year except lob on loads of mulch or else I would have spent half my life watering. 😂
Not sure if you have seen it but the back to Eden documentary explains allot of things that people miss I watched it and still had to go back and listen to it again because what I didn't understand is that in the back to Eden documentary he actually grinds or lets the wood chips decompose before putting it around his garden plants now around fruit trees it doesn't really matter just a tip thought I might just put that out there for you I've made more mistakes than I care to admit LOL
@lilylily9012 😮 same here. Just made a fresh plant bed with 4 inches for Fresh woodchip and 4 inches of composite on top. Any advise from anyone. Any easy fix
I did it too. Tilled in pine wood chips with a lot of pine needles in it. What do you do to help the soil recover? I'm going to cover crop with peas and oats mix. See what happens!
Love the compost and woodchip videos showing different mulches and composting rates, the experimentation and trials of Homeacres are always a draw for me and fascinating. Loving the new camera angles as well! Fantastic work Charles and the team.
I have kept chickens in sheds with large open air, fenced runs attached and used thick (8”) layers of wood chip in the bottom. I usually left it for two years after which the wood chip is largely broken down and there is no lack of nitrogen to cause the yellowing problems. For the past 2 winters I have had to house my chickens in a barn over winter (bird flu restrictions), and have used a 12”+ layer of leaves. I scatter grain on it every day and the scratching around breaks down the leaves brilliantly, all the while adding nitrogen. I cleared it all out last April and put it in its own large compost heap to mellow and at about 16 months it is the nicest looking leaf mold, with plenty of added chicken manure, which will be greatly appreciated when the worms have pulled it down into my heavy clay. The texture would have been fine to use after 5/6 months under the chickens but I was worried it might be too hot. It will soon be time to clear out this winter’s haul. I am very lucky in that I can get large bales of leaves that have been collected by machine, I also have room for large piles of wood chips and leaves that can take their own time until they are ready to use. Love the videos and my back loves no dig!
Fascinating Charles. We have some paths that have had wood chip on for ten years and during a 'bed reorganisation' last year we actually took some of the incredibly broken down wood chip from deep down and used it on top of beds. It really was like good compost or soil. And all for very little work. I have an allotment where wood chip is constantly being delivered and it is a free resource. Thank you local tree surgeons.
When it comes to the subject of woodchips and gardening there can hardly be a better source of information than that from the pioneer of this method the great Jean Pain. From minimal watering to the production of methane gas or passive water heating via large piles of composting woodchips, this man literally wrote the book. The book is probably out of print but PDF copies can be found on the internet. The Methods of Jean Pain: Or Another Kind of Garden
Thankyou and so right, and he was an amazing man, needed the internet! Following this reminder I looked him up and discovered that he died of bladder cancer in 1981, which explains I think why he never managed to get his amazing work out more widely. I've put a link to a downloadable pdf in this video description
Charles! I've been trying to inoculate my woodchip mulched paths and compost with king stropharia mushrooms which are a choice edible mushroom AND they are quite aggressive, so decompose woody material rather fast compared to most other fungi varieties. Very excited!
I love all this stuff. Not just from an experimental point of view, but from the fact that nature just looks at it, and goes, wow, you put that there just for us. Thanks... and gets on doing their thing.
Great video I’ve tried both methods a straight forward pallet bin I’ve found to be the best . Some plants like freshly rotted wood chip more than others strawberries , raspberries , blackberries. Cabbages don’t. I sieved wood chip to less than 1/2 inch chips.I then mix the chips with coffee grounds , comfrey, lawn clippings. 1 to 1 when the temperature drops and all major activity stops I add another load of greens 1 to 1 and repeat the process after 1 1/2 years it’s perfect. I also add 1/20 fine sharp sand.
Great video Charles. Informative as always. A couple of the local landscaping companies in my area have properties where they dump their woodchips and people are welcome to come take what they like for free. So you need a truck, a pitchfork, and a strong back, but so lovely to be able to choose which pile to take from. Some bigger chunks and others finer, different ages, and varieties of wood too. Worth checking with your local companies to see if they do this too. We use the free mulch on all our paths and as mulch on all our beds too. Such a nice resource!
Great video! It's my understanding is that the layers of top dressed wood chips work best for perennials and trees that are further on the path towards a forest. (Annuals tend to prefer more bacterial dominant soil) Fruit trees and such have done well with wood chips. When creating a new planting area I have layered the soil with chicken manure and wood chips and dug down and planted the following year. The worm growth using that method has been amazing! Also, as someone else mentioned the different chips have different benefits. Alder breaks down much faster than cedar for example. Alder is great in compost, and cedar to layer on paths you don't want to have to keep adding to. A book called "The hidden life of trees" is such a beautiful read and has helped my understanding of nature's beautiful processes!
Thanks for your lovely comment and I do agree that getting closer to this process takes us deeper into understanding natural process, and admiring its beauty. I do wish there was a way of being able to select which type of wood is delivered, but that is rarely possible.
Great video Charles, Yes, the 2 keys is water and air along with ground contact. I have found piling wood chips is the least effective. The green portion is critical I would love to get more leaves and evergreen but with the bigger and bigger chippers they use, we are getting more and more wood. I personally believe the best thing to do is spread the wood chips fresh like you do for paths anywhere you want a new garden bed in the future and walk away. The other option I have found works is the water and turn wood chip piles every so often to aerate it just like the professional compost suppliers do. I also believe Ground contact is really important since the microbes and fungal contact allows it to become part of the earth faster. This is a long term process and some of the wood bits can last for years depending on specie. Peace
Nice comment! I agree about the large chippers and there being too much old wood, sometimes. It's a nice philosophical comment you make, about contact with the Earth as well.
Glad to know Not to till wood chip into the yard. About to get a tree trimmed and want then to chip and leave if possible. Intent was to til into the grass and add more topsoil. You have saved me the embarrassment of really messed up yard, thank you!!!
I have several wood chip piles. One is about 3 years old and except for the surface is quite well broken down. I use it as a mulch on my vegetable plants and around fruit trees. The second pile has been untouched for more than a year and I’ll wait another year or possibly 2 before I start using it. My third and fourth wood chip piles are quite new - my neighbor next door had several hardwood trees removed and the tree service was more than happy to drop two big piles of wood chips near my garden. Those piles will not be touched for at least 2 years and possibly 3 years. I love the microbial and fungal growth in the wood chips and where I have used it, I can see a big difference in the soil quality overall. Great video - I’m looking forward to the one on biochar! Thank you!
Seeing Adam (yay--first time I've seen your helper!) nudging open the woodchip bale reminds me of opening up huge 1600 lb corn straw bales, there's so much material inside of the bale! and it's invigorating to open it up, like a Treasure Chest, you feel so good knowing your garden will be receiving a tremendous gift of Nature.
Charles, this is a very thoroughly look into different composting methods. I have a couple pseudo Johnson Su bio-digestor my self and even keep a recess one into the ground (just with the venting shafts and in addition a central worm tower). Working like a charm.
Every nook and cranny of your property holds amazement. The plants themselves are an obvious wonder, plus all the tidiness, but all the piles, make my heart beat faster. Access to all the richness of natural growing medium is a giddy dream. I "admire" my husband even more when occasionally I need a bag of potting soil, or compost, I really like those as gifts much better than a bouquet of flowers or candy. I hate to buy it that way, but for now.... We plan to develop our own systems for developing compost, cannot get started fast enough.
Hello Charles. ...... I grow a lot of potatoes in tubs in a concrete yard in Brighton, plus an 8 x 4 foot very shallow bed on chalk. ...... There was a small tree in the bed, pushing a wall out onto steps, and in getting it out, I had to dig down into the chalk to get the roots out, and having started, I dug down into the chalk bedrock right across the bed. ...... Having very little soil to begin with, and a 12 x 16 foot concrete yard, I broke the chalk into smaller pieces with a hammer, so as I walked on the chalk, it would break up smaller. ...... I also found a lot of broken pieces of old brick, which I also hit with a hammer, as it makes a brilliant addition to soil. I have a number of sieves, most of which are repurposed from various forms of metal mesh or pierced steel that I can find in skips, or mushroom or vegetable boxes. ...... I aim to create a very fine soil with a high level of humous, which one can dig into with ease, and breaks up easily. ...... I collect carrier bags of twigs as I walk around, and use a small branch clipper to cut them into 1/2 to 1 inch lengths, so that as I start a potato tub, I add twigs and pieces of cardboard as I go. ...... I also keep damp cardboard and worm food on the ground, so as to steadily harvest worms to add to my tubs, as I think you can never have too many worms, as they will move the soil around, and help convert even pretty dire soil into a rich soil. ...... Most of the twigs are well dead to begin with, and most are absorbed into the soil by harvest. I like to meditate in unusual ways, and just sitting in the sun, tapping away with a hammer at lumps of brick or chalk, until they pass through a particular sieve, passes time usefully. ...... I look closely at my soil, and remove any glass, metal, or plastic. ...... The small particles and dust are mixed into compost for soil, and the bigger bits walked on until they break down, or given another hammering. ...... A 'gravel' of chalk and brick, of a consistent size, looks fine, and it steadily breaks down under my boots. This technique has increased my soil by 600 percent, I reckon, and I have even added a 3 x 3 x 5 foot water tank as an extra potato tub. ...... I have not spent anything on materials - I just keep my eyes open as I walk around. ...... People leave planters full of old peat on the pavement, and I take all I can find, if not too far to carry. I only wish I still had land where others can come and share the fun, as you do, Charles. ...... I started an environmental project years ago, with a planning committee voting 16 to nil for an alternative garden centre on 7 acres I owned. ...... One socialist chief planner was utterly opposed, tried to cheat to stop that vote, failed, then went ultra-dirty to stop it, reversing the approval to refusal. ...... Serious criminal offences. ...... Huge coverup, lies in every direction, police brought in to apply pressure ( failed ), so they ruined me. ...... The only district councillor to support me ( affidavit accusing chief planner ) had a bulldozer put through his home - it was THAT nasty - and he died young. ...... Such nice people govern us, and run the law! ...... I was 'burnt' but the barrister they used to screw me, later Judge Andrew Chubb QC, covered himself in petrol, and struck a match. ...... What you put out, comes back. The Urbanites have done so much damage to the country, destroying the country estates that gave opportunities to young farmers and smallholders, and turning much of the countryside into a pleasure park for city people, or and agri-desert. ...... Growing food ought to be a proud and honourable profession, but it is looked down on. ...... Maybe if Putin gets his WW3, food in Britain will suddenly have value?
@@CharlesDowding1nodig A lot of dark energies coming out of the woodwork, pushing The Great Reset, but triggering The Great Awakening. I went through a stripping away process 30 years ago - very painful - so I know what is coming to Earth now, and accelerating in speed. I enjoy your videos - your love for Earth shines through. When I had land, I used to speak of Touching Earth as a form of healing. ...... Harder to do when obliged to live in a dismal city like Brighton. When I was in the south-west, I was very close to Nature and Earth, and picked up a field crystal, which instantly tuned me into a sun-spiral energy, that allowed me to dowse with my hand ( no rods ). I once asked where to dig for water on 4 acres, and my technique took me there in about a minute, as the technique tells me what direction to walk until over the spot. A writer friend knew a top water diviner, and asked him to see where he would look for water as a test, and he walked up and down for 15 or 20 minutes, but found precisely the same spot. 44,100 square feet in an acre, so 176,000 to 1 against finding the correct spot by chance! I love the way Life confirms things to one. Life is The One Mind - a single mind, experiencing itself multidimensionally on a truly huge scale.
This was fantastic n crazy informative. I just chopped down a tree on my property and I kept the woodchips😍😍 I was going to line the garden paths and my chicken run then leave the rest to decompose slowly in a pile to use as needed.
I use wood chips in my hen house as a bedding, both on the floor and at the bottom of the nest boxes, with straw on top for cushiness. I clean out the hen house and pile the material into heaps which turns into lovely compost in a year. Wood shavings are great too, but wood chips are free and add more volume to my heaps. I live in dry, hot California and find wood chips are such a great mulch, necessary in my opinion. I use fresh and slightly aged, and I find it doesn’t matter since I don’t mix it in anyway. I add it in the winter. Wood chips keep moisture inside the soil so much longer than any other material where I live. I use compost, straw, and wood chips in my garden. After several years of using chips as a mulch, the soil is like cake below! Wood chips are amazing! I have always used fresh chips in my paths with no issues.
I found this information on wood chips fascinating. I have been wondering how to use them in my gardening. This information helps so much. I feel so much better informed now. Thank you.
Great experimentation and learning. Have been a woodchip fan since watching back to eden but haven't always used it well. I've heard the prunings from young branches and leaves have the most mineral nutrition for soil biology - so if your chip has more of that its likely to make richer soil.
Hi Charles. I've been watching you for years, and recommending you to every gardener I come across. I live in the desert in UT, and use my in ground concrete swimming pool for my wood chip compost pile/chicken coop. The pile is several feet deep, and the bottom couple of feet are anaerobic rain water that collects throughout the year. The top is bone dry, the bottom is anaerobic water/sludge, but the middle foot or so is a fungi filled, sweet smelling, worm paradise! My compost comes out black (after sifting over hardware cloth), and grows things great! Keep up the good work and videos!
Great video. I started using sawdust for the very reasons you explained. I currently pile it up in chicken yard adding coffee grounds kitchen waste and grass clippings
Somerset looks very inviting, fresh gree grass, sunshine... I want to enlarge my resources for composting, never seems to be enough black gold. Cheers! Those little hard working wigglers are so welcome!
Thanks for this information Mr D. 😁. To make my inner tubes I asked a carpet sales company for a couple of cardboard tubes which they discard after selling the carpet. They're: easy to cut to length, hold moisture, grow mould, thick-walled so durable. Perhaps glue may be an issue ¿ This isn't a scientific experiment but theyre free, & I'm liking them so far.
Wood chip was a primary ingredient in my compost for this year. Added as much seaweed, horse bedding, cardboard and garden waste as I could. Really happy (surprised!) with the results as it was a bit of a makeshift heap and never reached any temperatures at all. All beds mulched and looking so ready for Spring 😊 Next year's heap started and I'm using the 4 pallets wired together structure this year, far easier to access!!!
Charles I want to add one more ingredient which is every important and often omitted with regards to wood chips breakdown - urine. "Home made urine" works like a charm in wood chips pile or bioreactor. Breakbown is very fast, do not smell and it's environment friendly 😁
Yes. I did an 'experiment' composting a cubic metre of woodchip with the addition of a 20lt bucket of watered down urine throw over it several times. I do live in the sub-tropics so that helps, but I found it broke down well in about 6 months. Wee is the key in almost all my gardening :)
Thank you so much for sharing your precious knowledge of gardening...i now have started my compost pile...so exciting to see how i do with your great teaching....thank you so much!! Jeanne from Georgia , USA
This is so encouraging! Thank you, Charles! We had a horrible freeze this past February and MANY trees lost a great deal of limbs (we listened to them crack and fall for days.) I hate the idea of the burn pile, and have been looking at mulching. But there's SO MUCH. I was also concerned about the nitrogen uptake associated with woodchip. I will definitely try a couple of these strategies to get our limbs cleaned up and used for the best purpose!
It’s unbelievable. Not only have you uploaded your asparagus video the night after my friend told me about her growing asparagus, that I decided to give it a try as well, but you also uploaded this video the exact day I was going to get some woodchips for the first time. Thank you!
@@barrymcdonald9868 you need to keep the edges short, we put the lawnmower on a low setting, that reduces the vigour of perennial weeds and then we use a trowel to remove any which invade
I've taken on a new allotment this year and woodchip is delivered for free so the more ways I have to use it the better. Thank you :) And hope you have a wonderful day ahead 🌳
So glad to see your trials. We bought a building with a forty year old gravel parking area in the back which needed to be the garden. We got yards of shredded hardwood scrap from a lumber yard. The first year was horrifying, but we added alfalfa pellets, friends grass clippings and another huge load of shredded hardwood and the second year wasn’t too bad. The third year saw perennials take off and the soil-ish ground is 6” deep. If I had devoted more money to the project, the plants would have been happier sooner. But it worked. Eventually. Thank you for your trials!
Great video thanks Charles & Co. I asked for and was given 2 tons of wood chips by the council for free last summer when they were pruning the trees by my house., Interestingly I found it decomposes faster when spread out thinly over a larger surface area vs in a pile or compost bin, even when mixed with more green matter. Thanks
Charles, you are my gardening guru. I admire your perspective, approach and practical application to gardening. Thank you for being such a valuable resource! Have you ever done private consultations? I’d certainly pay for an hour or two of your time via zoom.
I want to thank you for all you have taught me! My flowers are thriving and I work less with a more beauty. My soil is thriving ! Thank you, thank you, Gayle
Not having much space for multiple wood chip piles, I use my garden paths for decomposing them. I just harvested fully composted wood chip from my garden paths (matured for 5-6 years) and was able to use them straight on my beds as there . I feel that way you get to use them as cover on the pathways and later on as compost. I will put fresh wood chips down on the paths again this week.
I think woodchip paths are generally preferable to gravel in gardens for the reason you mentioned. Also, while gravel is better after repeated heavy rain (whereas woodchip can become a bit slippy and soggy), it doesn't really last longer as one would expect it to because the covering of gravel magically falls over time. Is it the ground underneath slowly settling lower under repeated walking, or the blackbirds doing their landscape gardening whilst looking for food (I am both amused and mildly irritated to watch blackbirds rooting around at the borders, chucking woodchip from the border onto the gravel path and vice versa)? I am not sure, but whatever the cause, the covering of gravel over the weed suppressing fabric has become rather patchy.
I have done something similar and it is great. It was quite by chance first time but having done it once I will be planning for it. I will be planning for it.
I used some for shade over my goldfish pond to help control algae. It’s only been out there 6 weeks and is falling apart. I will not be using in on my property anymore.
One thing you might not have touched on, Charles, is that the Johnson-Su bioreactor is engineered to, after the decomp process, do an extraction of the resulting compost, which is then injected into the ground along with the field or pasture seed that is being treated. Only a small amount, perhaps 10 lbs. per acre, is needed for the extraction. The trial results of improved fertility have been quite impressive, as the fungal component is stimulated by a huge factor.
My name is Victoria. I am from Ukraine. Zaporogya. Запорожье. Спасибо вам Чарльз, за ваши видео. Они немного отвлекают от тяжелых мыслей. Сейчас нам очень трудно. Наши мужчины защищают родину. Спасибо всем странам и Great Britain for help. My like 191.
Here in the USA, most of us are very much interested in the situation in your country. Your President Zelensky spoke yesterday to our Congress - his love and passion for your country and the Ukrainian citizenry were very touching. The video he presented to Congress was both touching and shocking. You are blessed to have such a leader. We are thinking of and praying for Ukraine.
Fantastic study and very interesting, especially the comparison of vegetable growth. Have you considered slotted pipe for you piles so you do not need to remove them during decomposition? I'm finding a mix of wood chip and coffee grounds is making a nice compost in about a year though still a little woody in places. I do turn my pile though too like normal compost making.
Using wood chips will teach us patience… far different from the instant gratification of ‘ordinary’ composting. It’s enjoyable planning up to three years in advance.
For those who think of making a wood chips pile in the garden, be mindful that it can attract yellow jackets. We had a tree removed a few years ago and asked the people who came to remove it to leave a nice pile of wood chips and a year later we found a yellow jacket nest that was larger than my my head.
Thanks for the video very interesting. I assume that if you’ve concluded that solid sides to the Johnson/Su will help with maintaining higher moisture levels nearer the extremities of the pile, you can then construct the pile on its side which would to my thinking make the entire operation much easier such as access, watering and sampling. I think the pipe holes would also stay open if used horizontally. Great wildlife havens as well. Cheers.
My experience with wood chips highlights several challenges. The carbon atom in the wood chip(s) is(are) very tightly held. In order to facilitate decomp, a high level of moisture content needs to be maintained and a relative high source of nitrogen needs to be available as well. Wood chips do not compost quickly. A pile that is maintained for a longer period of time negates the requirement for higher levels of Nitrogen. That is the primary trade off.
I wonder if you could drill holes in a hard plastic like PVC pipe, or some types of metal, and then place the pipe sections in various locations into a wood chip pile, and use as a way for water and air to infiltrate the inner core of the pile? Or even stake the pipe and pile the chips around them.
I live in S. Portugal where it is arid for most of the year and so water use is a major factor. 14 years ago we put bark chips over landscaping material to cover quite a large area of ground but earlier this year decided to take them up and replace with gravel as they had broken down quite a lot, even though mostly dry. I saved all the chippings and am sieving the pile bit by bit and using the 'dust' as a surface mulch around the veg garden. So far, so good. The large bark chippings from the sieving is used as a surface layer over landscaping material elsewhere in the garden. I have tried general composting in the traditional way but it requires too much water and work, so I surface compost under straw mulch or use one raised bed as a compost bed for a year, then put a covering of soil and plant squash into it. The squash love it. The downside is losing one bed a year but the upside is that no work is required. I occasionally water the bed with grey water. Thanks for your informative videos.
There were so many types of mushrooms growing in my yard and that made me happy, because it means the soil is healthy. Except, it freaked me out at first when I discovered dog vomit in my yard last year, until I googled it and realized it was another mushroom. 😅
What species of wood it is will have a huge impact on your result. I saw some Thuja in there, which would be quite resistant. Even more so with Juniper and Yew. I suppose adult Oaks are rarely chipped up, but that would also be resistant obviously. I am spoiled with easily degradable (in soil conditions) species like Spruce, Birch, Alder, Rowan and Aspen.
I think you are correct some species of tree or bush will be better or more suited to your particular environment.charles uses hundreds of different brown and green composts from coffee waste to mushroom compost straw grass clippings and wood chips can only really be a small part of the mix . otherwise the vegetables would complain.
Been using wood chips for ages and this video made me look again at processing properly - always good to keep up to date and check out other methods. Big thanks :)
The first bed I made in my garden at the end of 2019 was a double dug bed of silty clay that I made a big compost pile on top of over the winter, then turned it in in the spring of 2020. I thought the work of digging was too much, so I explored no dig methods, and the rest of my beds are done with compost over cardboard, with wood chip paths and borders holding their shape. I turned the first bed two more times, with the last being in the fall of 2020. It's now a mound of silty clay amended with compost, and since 2020, it's covered in a thick mulch of wood chips. I grow clay friendly plants like cabbages, Daikon radishes, Oxheart carrots, sunflowers, cucumbers and squash.
I use wood chips for bedding in my chicken coops as well as deep mulch bedding in our pig stalls for over wintering. I'm starting to learn what to do with the abundance. I like the suggestion of adding green matter (lawn clippings and such) to aid in the break down. Currently I've been adding thin layers of the chicken bedding to our compost after each addition of green waste (we do bokashi for our household food scraps, so every time I have a 5 gallon bucket full, we dump it on the heap and it really heats things up for a couple of weeks). The pig manure chips, I plan on letting it age and then using it to either plant new beds for food for the pigs or for mulch around our trees. We're fortunate enough to have a number of local tree service trucks dump here regularly, so we have more than we know what to do with!
I wonder if anyone has experimented with mixing alfalfa pellets (livestock feed) or used coffee grounds with wood chips to provide a natural nitrogen source to aid in wood chip decomposition at deeper layers. Any thoughts?
For about 8 years I’ve been using coffee grounds with sieved wood chip and comfrey. It’s a weed free compost in the end. Just do it twice 1 to 1 with greens to make sure the wood is broken down. Don’t go above 20% coffee grounds or it goes too impervious to air. When it’s full of worms you know it’s nearly ready.
That was very interesting to see the different piles of wood chips. I never heard of the Johnson-Su Reactor. Thank you for that. I use wood chips for my path ways.
Another trial on wood rich compost with beans and peas? Works well for me. 35 yrs ago I incorporated a lot of bark in the garden soil (little did I know then) and the lawn was looking rather yellow, but after spreading white and purple clover seeds (had to collect it in the wild because they only sold clover killers at my garden center) the yellow lawn became green without adding nitrogen rich fertilizer. I concluded it was a lack of nitrogen, because the municipal lawns were way greener along the paths, about a dogs leash length.
Yep, I simply pissed on mine every time I was outside working. Really helped break it down in about a year to acceptable mulching material for the garden
I've just cleared 5 acres of fallen branches, and yours is the first site I consulted for advice on what to do with it all. I wonder if the landscape fabric hinders the process by wicking away moisture, I like the idea of a full wood enclosure with an open top. Also, I've got many years worth of fallen moist leaf cover that I'll mulch up and mix in. Thanks for a thoughtful, informative tutorial.
That sounds a big job Stephanie! Yes I'm not convinced by the enclosure of landscape fabric and would possibly use cardboard next time. I like the sound of your leaf cover!
I use wood chips all over my garden and orchard here in the desert. I’ve learned it does indeed take a long time to become soil, and a lot of water as well. I’ve found that laying them 5” deep in my chicken’s run the chickens do a much faster job breaking them down like Paul Gautchi does. It takes a few months and is ready to lay on TOP of my garden as a side dressing. The worms do the rest. Free beautiful compost with very little effort on my part.
outstanding content, i learned so much; it's no coincidence that i found this video, the day after i had a 40 CY load of partially composted wood chips delivered to my little farm. thanks Mr. Dowding.
Have used more woodchip this last year on my allotment the unused has been stacked in some pallet collers. this video as with all of your videos are very useful Thankyou
This was excellent, Charles, thank you! I save everything, and I have several wood chip piles that have been hanging out for a year, and access to more. I will using on paths, but this is giving me many more ideas. Thanks so much!
My husband used to work at a paper mill and he got me a trailer full of wood chip when I first started gardening. We spread half of the fresh wood chip on the gardens pathways on the first year and the rest we spread on two years later. It has been a great looking pathway material and it has decomposed well so this spring we are renting a wood chipper and making some more wood chip from tree branches as we are cutting down quie a lot of trees from our property. From this video I got many ideas and we will most certainly try the Johnson-Su bioreactor!
Tremendous amount of informatoin in this video. WOW! Am considering how to prepare (?) my spoil for the winter in my 15 x 40 foot plot at a community garden. Most of the plot is covered with black mesh. I cut small holes in spaces for 8 zucchini plants and 8 cucumber plants. I found that watering each individual plant, this summer, however, took a lot of time ... plus dealing with cuc and squash bugs. A nearby gardener had no problems with bugs as he uses a lot of wood chips/mulch/vegetable/leaf mixtures all around his 3 small plots. He thinks his SOIL - that it is so healthy - kept bugs from his plantings. And, he said, he is retired so he has the time to spend 3-4 hours/day in his garden. Thank you from America.
Thanks for your comment, and that's interesting about soil health because you are so right. It translates to stronger plants. Any kind of decomposed organic matter which you can place on your soil this autumn, will translate to decent fertility through the coming years. Enjoy having a look to see what you can find and use.
