Fresh wood chips: how long to wait?
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Anybody know how long one should wait before planting in an area that has fresh woodchips? I just cleared a large area of my property to start an orchard in and I spread all the chips out on the ground in a layer 3-4 inches thick, I'm hoping to plant in this area late in spring.Or will the chips still be to "fresh"? Can I use these same chips on my perenial gardens now?
Thanks Mark
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(post #14357, reply #1 of 23)
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Mark, in MHO, the wood chips shouldn't give you much problem unless they are very fine. The beasties that compost the wood chips need nitrogen and they can out compete the plants to get it but large chips don't seem to absorb the soil nitroge like sawdust does. When I got into trouble mulching the garden with incompletely composted sawdust, I watered in soluable nitrogen and the plants perked back up again.
BJ The Gardeners Husband
(post #14357, reply #2 of 23)
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Frehly chipped wood has a lot of nitrogen available for the bacteria and fungi that digest them and I've used freshly chipped wood as a mulch on my shrub beds with no noticeable problem, except those shrubs need more pruning. Someplace there is stuff on "Ramail wood" as freshly chipped wood apparently is called and I'll have to look that info up again.
(post #14357, reply #3 of 23)
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Ok, I've said this before....Studies have shown that even fresh sawdust doesn't tie up significant amounts of nitrogen in the soil. I used it for years in making beds. I'd turn a bed by hand, add 3" of sawdust, turn it with a tiller, add three more inches of sawdust, turn it with a tiller again, and top it with a couple more inches of sawdust then plant. The plants went wild. Impatiens hated it and died right off. Everything else loved it. The real drawback to sawdust is that if you use it for a mulch, fungus invades it forming a mat that causes water to roll off of it. The same can happen with woodchips, only instead of rolling off, it just wouldn't sink through to the ground.
(post #14357, reply #4 of 23)
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Thanks all for the feedback, I have heard many different opinons on this subject so I figured I would bring it to the experts! I have planted in fresh chips before without any problems but I just wanted to be sure as I will be planting almost 30 different trees in this new area and I didn't want to loose any of them. It will be several months from now anyway (unless this warm trend continues! :)
Thanks again
Mark
(post #14357, reply #5 of 23)
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So what kind of orchard is this going to be Mark?
(post #14357, reply #6 of 23)
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If you're at all concerned, urea nitrogen is very cheap at the farm supply stores. I add some to fresh chips, probably not necessary.
Hopefully either there were no walnuts in what you cleared, or that the trees you're planting are juglone tolerant. That's my only worry about free chips.
(post #14357, reply #7 of 23)
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Steve,
Well my plan is to eventually plant an orchard of various fruit trees (mostly dwarf varieties I think) but for right now it is actually going to be a nursery for all my seedling trees that are starting to take over my kitchen garden. 5 years ago I signed up as a member of the Arbor day foundation and got my first 10 trees and have signed up every year since. So I have around 50 trees to plant out and this is the best place I could find. I don't think I will get around to doing the orchard this year but I plan too next year.
Greg,
I am not familair with the term juglone tolerant could you please explain? The chips I have are from trees that I cut down over the weekend mostly Maple and Oak no Walnut I'm sure of that. Thanks for the advice though.
Mark
(post #14357, reply #8 of 23)
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Mark
You should have no problems. Juglone is a chemical black walnut secretes. Kills tomato and rhododendron/azalea DEAD.
(post #14357, reply #9 of 23)
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Does anybody know the biochemistry of juglone toxicity and why it affects some plants and not others? Most of the internet sites I found refer to it as an inhibitor of respiration but don't go into much detail beyond that and don't explain why some plants are more susceptible than others.
(post #14357, reply #10 of 23)
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Urea nitrogen is free at my house.
(post #14357, reply #11 of 23)
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Karen, that makes me think of a similar question I have - I wonder, what is it in the hulls of bird seed that supresses grass growth? the area under my big bird feeder is always thickly covered with the seed shells left by the birds. No grass grows there. Somewhere I heard that sunflower seed hulls are herbicidal. One of those natural things I guess, like gopher purge made from castor beans and using tobacco powder on aphids.I wonder if Bee Jay would know.
(post #14357, reply #12 of 23)
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Astrid, it's called allelopathy, but I'm not sure there is much information on the specific chemicals responsible for it. I did find a paper on the internet that discusses soil characteristics and how they affect seed germination, though. I bookmarked it to read later and if it's interesting enough I'll post the link. By the way, Helleborus foetidus and Mazus reptans grow under my birdfeeder.
(post #14357, reply #13 of 23)
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I don't know how the birdseed thing works, but as for why it works, I believe I read that sunflower seeds inhibit the growth of other species where they fall, in order to kill off their competition, that is, the sunflower seedlings get all the local resources when they come up. I don't know if that is also the case with juglone.
(post #14357, reply #14 of 23)
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I read that some plants inhibit germination of their own seeds as well. When rainfall increases and the concentration of 'whatever' decreases in the soil, being washed away by the rain, they germinate.
(post #14357, reply #15 of 23)
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We use tobacco powder on aphids because they don't have lawyers to sue Phillip Morris.
No, I don't know the answer. I checked juglone in my Merk Index. It is one of three juglanic compounds found in walnut root and hulls and the only one chemically described. Its chemical composition is similar to naphthlene which used to be in moth balls. I've seen clear stands of walnut in the forest. No other tree grew among them. Sounds like Darwinian selection, doesn't it.
BJ
(post #14357, reply #16 of 23)
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There are a number of sites with information of juglone, some of which conflict about resistant plants. I didn't realize it was only in the roots and hulls; maybe the chips aren't an issue and I shouldn't worry.
(post #14357, reply #17 of 23)
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I never saw any real difference when I use sawdust that had an obvious layer of walnut in it. Unless that was when I planted those impatiens. Still too funny.
(post #14357, reply #18 of 23)
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Greg, I think it is found to some degree throughout the tree. If you want to isolate it for analysis you use the parts of the tree with the greatest concentration.
I don't know why my plants curled up their toes when I mulched with partially rotted sawdust. I know they recovered when I treated them with urea. Every since then I've been careful to dig sawdust at the edge of the pile where the soil and sawdust have mixed together and the weeds are growing in the mix. That's also where the sawdust is the blackest.
(post #14357, reply #19 of 23)
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One of my favorite things about plants is the tendancy they have to exhibit traits that are easy for us humans to interpret as intentional. Creating substances that retard competition, self-inhibited germination, seemingly willful reactions to the power of, of all things, light... the world becomes more amazing the closer you examine it. How lucky are we?
(post #14357, reply #20 of 23)
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Yeah, and how about those giraffes that were clever enough to develop longer necks? Too cool!
(post #14357, reply #21 of 23)
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Beej, the studies I refered to were from Cornell and they've been repeated elsewhere. But I'll concede that adding some fertilizer at the time of mixing in the sawdust sure doesn't hurt.
(post #14357, reply #22 of 23)
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Well, you know,Jeana, I always go with the scientific studies except when they don't agree with my prejudice.
BJ
(post #14357, reply #23 of 23)
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I hear ya.