Hey today while out pruning fruit trees… i hear all this racket over at my neighbors place… chainsaw and wood chipper sounds for hours and is still going.
He has a long driveway and it is lined with douglas pear trees. They are mature 20+ years old… and have grown quite tall.
He is having them trimmed… taking at least 1/3 off he top.
They are just into heavy bud swell.
Thinking about asking my neighbor and the work crew there if they will dump all that chip at my place.
What do you all think… douglas pear topping type trimmings chipped up… should make some good wood chip mulch… Right ?
The trees are still healthy and most of what is being cut off and chipped is smaller wood with heavy bud swell.
Maybe not if they are full of fireblight cankers or something, but other than that, I would happily use them.
I’ve used plenty of questionable mulches — like freshly ground chips made from fresh pecan limbs — on trees like pears, persimmons, and jujubes, and have had no problems.
Looks like a good score. From my experience mulches are a great thing. If you apply the chips now, the rains to come will wash soluble nutrients and small bits onto the soil surface, promoting microbial life as soon as its warm enough. The chips will keep soil moisture levels more uniform and the soil will be kept a bit cooler as spring comes and this may delay bloom just a bit which is usually not a bad idea with springs often coming too early. Your soil fertility looks very good so no need to worry about nitrogen depletion because you are not incorporating the chips. A 2-3 inch layer will also block many new weed seeds from sprouting and those that grow will be readily pulled out.
I have a pile that i got a couple years ago that has like 10-15 wheelbarrows full left… it is about half compost at this point. I will use that up first… give all my fruit trees and other beds a top coat of that… and use the new mulch on top.
Hopefully what I get this time will last me another couple years…
I grew up near a planer mill and they had pretty well filled a gully with hardwood shavings and sawdust. it was always smoking but the fires never got enough oxygen to break out and burn properly. Pretty neat balance.
last spring i got a load of hardwood chips in mid may from a local arborist. it was full of green twigs and shredded small green leaves. the day after a good rain fell on it, it was smoking like crazy. you could just barely hold your hand on it it was so hot. i let it do its thing for a month then i flattened it out to about 3ft so it wouldn’t go anerobic in the middle. by oct. that pile had broke down to nearly half. normally it would take 3 years for it to do that with a pile of more late summer chips. also we got alot of rain last summer and warmer temps. which also helped it along. pretty sure any bugs or diseases in there got roasted good.
I put two 5 gal buckets of my older mostly composted wood chips… on my daughters new persimmon tree and pear tree this morning… then split a wheelbarrow full of the new chip on top of that.
Also saved the day… their kitchen sink was not draining… older home older pluming… my 30 ft plummers auger… took care of that.
Great tool for clearing a deep clog.
My Obsidian blackberries survived our 2-3F low this winter… but suffered some significant tip die back. Going to get them trimmed up this evening… get rid of the dead cane and make sure the rest is tied to my trellis good. Looking forward to trying Obsidian berries this late spring.
