Weedless Gardening

[4grandbabies]

Anybody use wood chips for mulch?
Not the reddish wood chips that a lot of people seem to put in their garden, the natural forms of wood chips.

Plan on using some this summer, we obtained a huge truck load from the area tree trimmers for free. I understand they can add a lot of acid to your garden, also, have to be sure they dont have any toxic things (someone said pine or cedar-not good) I did top off my blueberry plants that we started this fall.. hope it was a good idea. I will be watching for more replies also. this topic is in arcives on here somewhere.. I need to research back there.

 

[GrowsLotsaPeppers]

Anybody use wood chips for mulch?
Not the reddish wood chips that a lot of people seem to put in their garden, the natural forms of wood chips.

I do. And so do many of the woodworkers in our area club. It's easier than dumping the chips and sawdust into the recycle stream.

One of our guys has been using a no-till approach for some time now, and raves about it. He's a turner though, and there is somewhat lower dust content, and higher chip content in his.

My stuff gets composted, mostly. I say mostly, because high concentrations of walnut chips/dust go into the recycle bin. I killed a mandarin orange tree some years back, as near as I can tell, with fresh walnut chips. All the other stuff gets mixed with the kitchen output, the lawn clippings and the leaf collections, and cooks for at least 5 months, sometimes longer, and goes into the vegetable gardens and fruit trees.

The roses are treated like royalty, and get only LOML-approved chips for top dressing, since molds are a threat to their existence. And they keep the roving dogs away, too! I'm sure that they would do fine with shop-generated chips, too, but I have to keep her happy.

Is that enough answer?

 

[seedcorn]

I am. Using it for areas that are hard to mow. Plant perennials and a few annual in it. So far so good altho I wouldn't use it in a garden as the microbes trying to break down the wood chips tie up nitrogen.

 

[boggybranch]

I have only used woodchips for the footpaths. It takes them soooooo long to break down and help build up the soil's humus structure. (something that straw-like materials will do in a year's time)

 

[HiDelight]

I use the pine shaving litter from my chickens around my plants after it has cooled down a bit

if you are talking about freshly chipped chips from a wood chipper

sure I have used those as well


you can seriously "mulch in" with anything that will build your soil including gravel! ...people in tropical places use ground up coconut shells now it makes a great mulch I hear

here you go ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulch

 

[patandchickens]

Mulch is a wonderful thing but it isn't going to make a garden weedLESS, unless you are starting with weed-free soil to begin with. Some annual weeds, and pretty much all perennial ones (quackgrass, thistle, perennial sowthistles, bindweed, etc) will come up through really quite a lot of mulch, more even than is healthy for your garden plants.

However with the mulch cover on there, the soil gets much looser and more friable, and stays damper, which means that (especially after a couple years of this) it is much easier to pull out the weeds by their roots.

I have gradually got my front flowerbeds essentially quackgrass-free, and *almost* perennial-sowthistle-free, after 5 or 6 years of mulching and weeding. In a flowerbed you have to remember that significant-depth mulching will also decrease self-seeding of flowers, which in some cases is good (how much veronica or perennial flax do you *need*? ) but is also a little sad in a way, and sometimes inconvenient for things you *need* to self-seed.

I have to watch how deeply I mulch in the veg garden though because too much depth seems to encourage the voles/slugs/earwigs too much. And again, because my veg garden soil cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as free of weed seeds/roots, it ain't weedless gardening, it is just "you weed less"

JME,

Pat

 

[boggybranch]

When I started using the "Ruth Stout year-round mulching method" (last year), I started by digging up all the weeds and grass, incorporated horse manure and compost. Then applied an 8-10 in layer of costal bermuda hay. Any weeds that made it through that layer, got another 5 inches of hay tossed on top of them. The only "weed" that, persistently, came up through the mulch (in my area), was nut grass.....but, I think it'll come up through concrete.

 

[boggybranch]

Another interesting article, on the subject, that I came across through one of Hattie's posts

http://desertification.wordpress.co...-alternative-to-the-rototiller-daves-garden/e