Why Using Wood Chip Mulch is Great for Your Garden

Tips, Tricks

1. can i use roots?
2. There's a municipal compost pile here that is primarily composted wood chips. Is it possible to use too much? I figure by the time next spring gets here, the worms will have worked them well into the soil. Or should I till them in? Maybe and horse manure and till them both in to prevent nitrogen loss? Thanks for any input. Love your videos BTW!
3. I am so excited! The other day I passed tree trimmers while on my way home. Because of your video, I decided to stop and ask what they do with the wood chips. They told me they just dump them somewhere. I said I would take them, so I gave them my address, and the next morning at 8 am I got a whole truck load of FREE wood chips dumped right next to my garden!!! Thank you for inspiring me to stop and ask, when normally I would have just driven by and wished for wood chips.
4. what about using wood chips and fresh horse manure? (from a horse farm)  Will it make my soil too acidic? What about mixing the wood chips /manure with the garden soil
   I currently use mouldy hay bales as a mulch in my garden and then turn it down with the soil each season (after walking on the hay it is broken down into fibres at the end of the season
5. Best thing I ever did for my garden. Laid out a 4 inch layer back in April and now I have worms and mycelium galore underneath. Plants are really tapping into there newfound nutrient source.
6. For 35 bucks I can go and get 5 truck loads of compost.... from the county recycle place. I also get free wood chips from a local tree company... if they are working close its free... if not I can go to where he stores them for free... I put down cardboard and cover my yard between the raised beds... looks good. I also cover my beds with it... no weeds!
7. Excellent idea. Thanks Kim.
8. Awesome update thanks for sharing have a blessed day
9. Love how excited you were about your chips !
10. WARNING !!!   when getting these "Free" wood chips be careful !!!  some trees are TOXIC !!!  especially for animals..Black locust in particular !!  they are the ones that bloom...I have used these in the past and in our area they were easy to get and lots of them...but it helps to talk to the people doing the chipping and yes too many leaves and or pine and fir, cedar or spruce is not good either...been there done that,,,it is a crap shoot most of the time as to what you get. Depends on the area and type of trees that are popular...you got lucky girl...!!
11. I remember a guy on YouTube chased down a tree service for the wood chips. Lol. It was pretty funny. They were so happy to get rid of them. 
12. Good for the lawn mower as well...The wind will blow the chips out into the lawn.. I seen it in Kansas and I saw it in Idaho.....Use only small chips to brake down in a couple of years.  There are many types of mulch that is far better than wood chips....You paid just what it is worth...!!
13. You sure got lucky with that mulch (or maybe it's that I got unlucky) - it looks great!  I got some free mulch when the power company had people out trimming in my neighborhood.  It was the most terrible stuff I've ever seen!  It is really stringy branches mostly, not at all chipped.  Sometimes you get what you pay for.  I would love to have what you got!
14. They erected about 200 of those  wind mill genreators in our county in last 3 yrs and then  had to put up new linesalso.. they erected about 98 miles of line form the wind mills to transmission distribution site,, they condemende  my property and 600 other peoples for the "good of Spanish companies" as emmint domain and took out 6 acres of my property 175 feet wide across the top of my mountain, I really did not want people from another nation, controlling my property BUTT, or  the now erodible  bare spot or the lines  going across or the fact I have to pay taxes on that land and cant use it for anything but mabey cow eating the gravel that is now there.. , so I asked them what they were going to do with the brush that was being desposed of,,they said they had to haul it by law  to a dump site, I had 40 acres of an old field that wont even grow stickers because it has been farmed since 1863 by my ansestors ,and is played out, and im the 6th generation owner and so I said I had a field in the area..they brought me 280 semi-dump truck loads of chips and put on my fields ,then some one else saw what I was doing by springtown 60 miles away and offered to pay them 20.00 a laod,so he received over 600 loads of the rest of the clean up, Now  these piles are about  5-7 foot tall and about 25 foot long touching at ends and sides reak close and covering the whole  field it has covered the 50 acres and then some more fields,, it  takes about 5 yrs to breakdown or that's what the last 24 piles did when the coop op cleaned out the right of ways,, now granted ill b 63 by then these fields will b able to grow cotton again ,,  my grand dad was 77 last time we got some n 1986 and he died at 89 n 2001, so he saw it was good for the ground, even though he complained when he had to plow around it,, best sudan hay we ever had in that 1 1/2acres for 4 yrs, and still does fairly well 26 yrs later, compared to rest of the 50 acre hay-field, and all I did was ask,, they even brought me 40 loads of gravel  they had to take up and piled in the mud trails we  called roads which I haven't spread yet .. I will now have plenty of natural fertilizer for  this 300 acres and my other 260 acre place and also  gave me 72. 25 foot  by 18-30 in tin horns, just ask guys  just ask,,it cost to go to land fields with good usuage
15. Better than coins dropping from a slot machine. You hit the mulch lottery!
16. Hey Kim! What a major score! The before and after photo's are dramatic and Amazing! We finally got some drought relief here and West Texas looks like Ireland! I've gone from battling rats to duking it out with SATANIC squash bugs! I am not "winning" because that is not possible, but I am holding my own and harvest is in full swing! If you have never made dill pickles with zucchini you are missing out on an Awesome dill pickle!  Uplifting and exciting video you guys keep the faith the drought will break, heck we are living proof!  All the Best- David
17. Kim,
    I've done this twice around my house. The first was from river birch trees I had cut down in my front yard. The second time I did as you did. I heard a company cutting down oak trees and grinding them up down the street from me and had them dump it in my driveway. No waiting list here north of Atlanta!  It wound up being twice as much as I needed! :-O  So, I put them down a few inches thicker than I planned. The oak chips broke down very well over the past year. Some I put in a big pile, about 20 wheelbarrows worth, to decompose to use in the vegetable garden this year,-- the "Back To Eden" gardening method.
    Yours will take longer to break down due to the drought conditions, but if you water once in a while, they will break down. They look very nice as well.... Looks like red cedar which will break down slowly.
    Get those kids out there to help! ;-)
18. love your videos! wood chips are the best! we have a local tree trimming company that dumps all their trucks on the back side of their lot and will give all a person want's to haul off! if you get there before 8 am, when they leave, they'll even load your truck or trailer for you with their bobcat! I've hauled out 6 6x12 trailer loads this spring/summer so far. I put my garden in spot there's never been one before, and used the wood chips to mulch between the rows! Plan on doing that all through the summer and fall, and then till it in this fall with a couple loads of free horse manure from the daughters place. Anyway, cool score on those chips!
19. Yay! What a score. so happy for you, Kim.
20. wood chips will pull nitrogen out of the soil. be careful.