Landscaping Using Wood Chips

In general it is best to use wood chips around established plants only and avoid the vegetable bed except to create paths.

Landscaping using wood chips.

Wood chips also regulate soil temperatures bring a natural feel to an area and can serve as path material to prevent muddy or dusty conditions. Arborist wood chips are valuable in an organic garden particularly ramiel wood chips. Use 4 to 6 inches of wood mulch over a nicely broken down organic layer such as leaf litter or compost. In fact installing wood chips around your plants can reduce watering requirements by as much as 50 percent.

This ratio creates an ideal mulch gardening material when the wood chips have composted. It is important to understand that the leaves are a source of nitrogen and the branches are a source of carbon. Keep chips away from stems and trunks and the siding on the house. The chips create a strong mesh bond that helps keep water under the surface.

In fact wood chips are the least flammable organic mulches you could use. Since most arborist wood chips are chopped fresh from living or storm damaged trees let the wood chip mulch age and dry out even as long as a season before using it. While they are effective and a great option 99 99 of the time keep in mind that most of the issues in using wood chips are related to improper use. Ramiel chips come from small branches and leaves and are wonderful for building healthy garden soil.

Problems with using wood chips in a garden as with any kind of landscaping tool or mulch there are some considerations you need to make before deciding to go with wood chips. When used around plants and trees wood chips do a better job containing moisture than gravel beds. If it is kept moist it s unlikely to combust. The leaves provide nitrogen to help break down the carbon in the branches.

While it could be possible for plant diseases to come in with wood chip mulch the chips would have to be in contact with the soil close to your plant s roots to spread. Adapting this plan for building garden soil by using a wood mulch such as wood chips sawdust or other woody residues is a strategy that promises huge long term returns. The combination of fieldstone and hemlock mulch in landscaping wood chips mulch and natural stepping stones in a pathway landscape modern pathway landscape with black mulch and river rocks mulch and rock patio in a transitional backyard landscape. Back to eden gardening uses wood chips that are 90 needles leaves and branches that have been chipped from tree trimming waste.