Wood chips / compost

I suppose there could have been poison ivy vines on the trees that might have seeds. Oak wilt is the one I would be concerned about where we are. However, there are no oaks near my new orchard, so I use lots of free municipal wood chips, most aged, there. At home most of our oaks have already been exposed to oak wilt and many have already died, so it doesn’t matter.

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Most of the “weeds” I get in wood chips are tree seeds like locust, maple, oak, some nasty things like poison ivy.

Overall, I think the advantages of wood chips outweigh the negatives. I probably spread more than 40 loads a year and haven’t recognized any disease problems yet.

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If the chips are fresh, you can be sure of no seeds if trees or vines are not holding them at time branches and/or trees were cut. I would think seeds would mostly be a problem coming from large seasoned piles with chips added to them gradually. A single shipment with seeds could contaminate the entire pile.

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If I dump wood chips on top of existing pine straw mulch around trees would that still foster the fungal environment I’m looking for? Or should I first remove the pine straw? Thanks for any ideas. Would be much easier to just dump chips on top.

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Yes just dump the chips on top of the pine needles.

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I spread wood chips annually for a mulch layer. I prefer to spread them as soon as possible after delivery. If they sit in a pile in the rain for a while they can become soaked and quite heavy. As a result moving them later becomes a much more difficult chore. Prefer to keep a layer at least 4" thick in my garden and orchard at all times for moisture retention and weed suppression. I have noticed a number of mushroom species have begun to thrive in the chips. I also see a tremendous amount of earthworm activity in my soil.

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The trick to growing fruit always comes back to maintaining moderate vigor, especially for apples. if you live in the humid region, annual application of woodchips has to eventually create an excessively rich soil for the job- nothing creates a better reservoir of usable water than most forms of humus. It is also a source of steadily available nitrogen, releasing the most as the soil warms in summer- just when a fruit grower doesn’t want a lot of N because it feeds vegetative growth then instead of the fruit. With bearing trees you want that burst of N in early spring.

I am speaking from experience, and about growing in a region that gets rain during summer months. I mulch trees as long as they are not being overly stimulated but with apples I eventually let the soil beneath turn to mowed grass. Often I do the same with all fruit tree species, excepting the trees that need more stimulation and anything on truly dwarfing rootstock.

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Agree. At some point I usually let grass grow under older trees and make the tree compete for N, to reduce blight susceptibility.

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Here in CA where we get very little rain for most of the year, wood chips take many years to decay. It is well established fact that they are invaluable for their ability to help retain what little soil moisture we have.

Some gardeners are of the opposite opinion as you Alan, they decry the use of wood chip mulch claiming that it causes nutrient deficiency by robbing the soil of nitrogen.

I would be interested to review any scientific literature indicating that application of wood chip mulch affects soils in ways that strongly affect nutrient availability to the underlying root system. At this point I am somewhat skeptical of claims on both sides of the debate.

If you search for it you will see there really is no debate. When woodchips are first placed on top of the soil bacteria will pull N from the soils top inch or so to complement the high carbs of woodchips. Trees don’t tend to be restricted to that thin layer so you rarely see an N issue for them with woodchip mulch, unless drainage is very poor and roots are only functioning near the surface. If you till the chips into moist soil, it is another matter entirely as the bacteria will throw a veritable orgy, sucking up N like it was booze at the human version.

All cool composting is N neutral in the long term, or would be, except that there are N fixing bacteria in the mix as well that become increasingly involved when year after year of chips are put down. Look up humus and you will see that it releases much more available N than normal soil and also that the more OM that is in the soil the more N is likely to be available within it as well.

However, in regions without rain during the growing season, excessive vigor can be controlled with the level you irrigate. I have stated that I don’t know if the excessive vigor is primarily the result of increased access to available N, to the increase in available water or the most likely possibility of it being a combination of both. I’ve seen research that indicates that excess N alone does not in itself lower brix levels in fruit- it is well understood that water does, even without excess N. However, it does seem logical that the vigor stimulated with N in concert with more water would create shade and reduce the sugar delivered to the fruit because leaves closer to fruit contribute more to fruit while further away they serve new wood. At the very least, the excess shade would contribute to biennial bearing of apples by starving spur leaves.

If you are interested in this stuff, just get a basic text book on soil - one geared toward agriculture.

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Adding a layer of composted manure around many pears and apples before adding woodchips. This should buy my trees several comfortable years of growth. I stockpiled manure this winter when I had a source a long with woodchips and other useful things. The soil is very poor in this field with heavy clay and thin loam.

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Looking very nice Clark! Will look so nice when the trees leaf out

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Just curious Clark, how many trees do you think you have?

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A few hundred

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http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/FS160E/FS160E.pdf

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Huh, can you try to use your wood chip mulch for mushrooms? Even if you are just mulching other fruiting plants?

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Mushrooms are not common here unless there is moisture here which is in the spring and fall.

Not what you were originally asking but other growers have put king stropharia spawn (wine cap) in the chips which taken grown well throughout the wood chips.

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did stropharia several years in my father-in-law’s wood chip mulch at the base of his apple trees. The only drawback is your chip mulch doesn’t stay chips nearly as long since you added an aggressive decomposer to the mix, but the mushrooms were tasty.

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I figured there was a trade off of some kind but nonetheless to have an added bonus of wild mushrooms might be a good thing for some.

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