Ralph Mowery wrote:
>
>
> Part of my garden has died off . I had a pine tree blow over and used a
> wood chipper to get rid of most of it. Would it be ok to put lots of
> those chipe in the garden and use a tiller to put it in a mix of the
> soil, or should I just leave the wood chips in the woods or put it in my
> compost pile ?

do you have pathways you can use them on?

mixing them in the soil means more of a nitrogen hit
as they break down. eventually they will give that back
but overall i recommend just using some on top to mulch
gardens unless you have some perennial plants or shrubs
which will tolerate more on top.

we use wood chips to mulch our perennial gardens and
then after some years i have partially decayed humus
and woodchips which are much better for adding to the
veggie gardens. i use some of it in the worm buckets
as the worms doing their thing to paper and food scraps
will give it a lot of nutrients and then that is my
primary fertilizer for tomatoes, onions and peppers after
that i rotate the beans and peas and garlic through and
that works really well.

if you want them to break down faster, mix some dirt
with the pile of wood chips and keep it moist. you
should start seeing some steam come off it in a few
days/week on the cooler mornings. turn it all over in
a few weeks and let it cook some more.

easiest thing for us is to just use them on the
perennial gardens and then we let nature do it's own
thing.

songbird