What Do Woodchips Do? A Soil Comparison of Sandy Clay
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- Опубліковано 11 бер 2024
- After about 2 inches of rain in a day, I now have a soggy puddle filled yard. Always curious, I’m digging 5 different areas to compare what wood chips are doing to my soil. I am showing the progression of the soil condition to see the soil health and comparing the water retention abilities of the soil. I expect to find as years go by, the condition of the soil and the soils ability to absorb water will improve and allow roots to grow more deeply. There may also be a duck nest update in here too.
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We are located in Summerville, SC, where the line of Zone 8B and 9A goes nearly straight across our property. So what to do? We are going to try growing anything we can get away with from zones 9 and maybe 10! We’ll be getting some guava, papaya, and even mango’s to try to get them to grow and thrive in our little food forest.
I have watched days to weeks worth of UA-cam videos on Back to Eden Gardening. I’m doing my own thing but still following what I’ve learned from Back To Eden Gardening as well as how to grow a regenerative and organic garden. I’m following the methods as shown by Paul Gautschi, James Prigioni, Jim Putnam and a bunch of other channels like Self Sufficient Me, the Weedy Garden and many others, the list really is too long to mention everyone. But seriously, a big thank you to all the creators I’ve been watching that have been outstanding at teaching me. I can only hope my videos continue to assist others and show that anyone with the willingness to try this, you can do it too!
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I have done a yearly arretation (deep plugs) followed by either wood pellets or alfalfa pellets from the local TSC store these give organics to the soin, went from sand to noce dark topsoil in a few years.
I've heard adding the pellets helps out. I knew a guy long ago who used chicken feed to fill in after aeration. I think he went with that just due to low cost. Probably added some unique minerals as well. Anything natural could probably be used to amend after plugging. I'll check out TSC and see what I can find on the cheap. Thanks!
Maybe revise the title of the video on what it does to sandy clay soil!
I love it as I do have this problem in my area and clay killed bunch of my trees and plants...tnx
Sorry to hear about your trees and plants 🙁 Thanks for the title tip!
I think heavy clay or loamy soil, you're gonna always have compaction if it's just a mowed lawn. A lawn isn't strong enough to decompact the soil and drain the excess winter rain. A good comparison would be wood chips against just a wild patch of the garden left to its own device.
In any case, I've been using wood chips for 6 years and they're great. But I've learned a few lessons. First, in heavy clay like I have, I still need to till the soil in some areas. In others, which had the most wood chips, I don't. And finally, I also don't need to till if I've sown winter cover crops. The last lesson is for flower beds : contrary to popular belief, wood chips can actually do some bad. Because a lot of flowering perennials and ornemental grasses DO NOT prefer rich soil, and will actually thrive a lot better in poor soil. Stuff like poppies, echinops, eryngium, carex... You're lucky, in the US most natives are from rich meadows and will be fine with wood chip gardens : sunflower relatives, echinaceas, monardas, eupatorium etc... But in Europe not so much. So I have to contend with that and not put too much wood chips, otherwise my flowers beds would have tall disproportionnate plants that would flop over in the wind. They would also die a lot earlier than in the wild due to that excess fertility. What about trees and shrubs ? Don't know yet, I think they will do fine with wood chips, especially fruit trees. They much prefer wood chips to weeds like quack grass, I can tell you that.
Super interesting the differences. I'm not using much wood chips in the few flowers I have at this point. I'm planning on filling in the areas between the trees with flowers for pollinators, as well as vegetables and herbs and the like. Thanks for giving me the heads up on how some other plants may react to the chips. They will be more composted by next year, when I'll be filling it all in. I may need to alter the plan a bit. Everything is an experiment!
I feel 90% of negative comments on woodchips are wrong or bad perspectives, people seem to think woodchips are never maintained or weeded and thats wrong, you still have to pull weeds and rake chips into piles during planting.
Absolutely, this has been my experience. I also learned you can't just dump a bunch or a few inches of wood chips on existing weeds and expect them to be smothered and die. If you want them to smother and die, cardboard or construction paper has to be used. Otherwise, yeah, grab a rake and go rake the top bit of wood chips to get weeds out. They practically just fall out anyway. They're not rooted into anything other than the wood chips. Seems like disturbing them with a rake is almost enough to kill all of them. Weeding my wood chips has been very easy so far.
I'm still learning though, still experimenting, still curious to see what happens in a year to 5 years and beyond. I'll be documenting the whole journey.
IDK about wood chips it might faster to go with a couple cubic yard of compost and a tiller.
Trying not to till anything I don't "need" to. I'm ok being patient and waiting for everything to compost in place for a couple years. It's all a big experiment!
Check out I AM ORGANIC GARDENING. BY MARK in NJ. He has an organic comericial farm. He started out using wood chips & leaves to make raised rows to plant in. He's the best in my opinion. I have also followed the ones you mentioned where you talked about your vide
Thanks! I'll be sure to check him out.