Woodchip question

[Oliver Buckle]

Yes I agree, properly managing ones 'volunteer seedlings' has many benefits. Eradicating them all as weeds is a mistake. Such plants add biomass, as well as food & habitat for pollinators and other insects, the majority being beneficial. Their roots not only draw up nutrients, but also loosen heavy soils and enrich sandy ones. Most add beauty as well, call them semi-wild flowers.

Of course, there are some that are much more trouble than they are worth, and even the good ones are better when their fecundity is somewhat reduced. In other words, Planned Planthood.

A slight aside, I was reading about the history of weeds, in Britain most of the country was covered in forest before the humans cut it down for agriculture, which meant that most of the plants that grow as weeds in our gardens were confined to confined to shallow, marginal soils between rock outcrops and forest, we created the conditions in which they could proliferate, before that they were pretty rare wildflowers.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Yes I agree, properly managing ones 'volunteer seedlings' has many benefits. Eradicating them all as weeds is a mistake. Such plants add biomass, as well as food & habitat for pollinators and other insects, the majority being beneficial. Their roots not only draw up nutrients, but also loosen heavy soils and enrich sandy ones. Most add beauty as well, call them semi-wild flowers.

Of course, there are some that are much more trouble than they are worth, and even the good ones are better when their fecundity is somewhat reduced. In other

Watched by this guy how he delt with compaction.

I believe that is called "The Youngback Method".

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I noted that the guy with the broadfork took care to step off it to the sides, even though the soil he was he was avoiding stepping on was about to treated for compaction. Give yourself narrow enough beds that you don't have to be on them to work them, and avoid machines like rotorvators, they are quite heavy and you can do most of the jobs they do with hand tools. Last time I used one was when we moved house and the garden was completely overgrown with weeds 120 foot by 40 foot, I rotorvated the lot and sowed with grass which I left for six months while we did the house up, then dug beds out of it by hand.
I have also spread partly rotted compost over a piece of ground I am not going to use for a bit, it keeps it damp, encourages insects and worms and adds quite a bit to the soil, then when I am ready to plant there I simply rake it off and stick it back in the compost heap and the ground is in reasonable condition.

 

[Mr_Yan]

I use a ton of woodchips around my gardens and yard. Woodchips and fall leafs are the work horses in my garden. These are the only reason I have black soil and not beach sand in my garden.

BUT

NEVER rototill woodchips into the soil. This will bind the nitrogen and make it unavailable to plants for 3 to 5 years. If you leave the woodchips or leaf litter on the soil surface it will break down and compost in place and worm and insect activity will carry it around in the soil structure.

I'll do a mic drop and say:
Rototilling is one of the worst things you can do to a garden.

 

[DirtMechanic]

I use a ton of woodchips around my gardens and yard. Woodchips and fall leafs are the work horses in my garden. These are the only reason I have black soil and not beach sand in my garden.

BUT

NEVER rototill woodchips into the soil. This will bind the nitrogen and make it unavailable to plants for 3 to 5 years. If you leave the woodchips or leaf litter on the soil surface it will break down and compost in place and worm and insect activity will carry it around in the soil structure.

I'll do a mic drop and say:
Rototilling is one of the worst things you can do to a garden.

The Woodchip Clan! Yeah is hard to outsmart Mother. That is how she has done it for quite a number of years. The old woman is probably lazy but I tell you there is very little labor in doing it that way.

 

[Ruderunner]

You gotta be very careful when adding sand to clay soil, because it can actually worsen the soil by making it more dense. I've never worked with clay soil, but have watched a bunch of videos out of curiosity.

I feel I'm about at the ideal place for sand clay mix, previously it was like breaking rock, now it can be shoved and turned pretty easily. It also retains moisture much better.

 

[Ruderunner]

Decomposition will greatly slow down in Winter but it won't completely stop. If you have organic matter you can put it in on the soil at anytime, but if you are going to buy organic matter, I would wait until Spring.

Organic matter is always decomposing in soil. The amount that remains year-to-year (without addition) is dependent on climate and vegetation. Basically we add more organic matter to give our gardens a boost, especially during the growing season. While the added organic matter is still present, it will improve drainage in heavy soil, water retention in light soil, and will feed the microbiota in all soils. Even after most of the added organic matter has turned into CO2, there will still be a nutrient remnant that will enrich the soil.

Organic mulches will also eventually work into the soil, but while on the surface they will help conserve water, prevent erosion, and suppress weeds. This is one of several reasons I'm against plastic weed cloth. It acts as barrier preventing organic mulch from being fully incorporated into the soil below. By the way, the word 'mulch' does not refer any particular material, it refers to covering the soil surface with any such material, be it wood chips, bark, leaf mold, rocks, pebbles, etc.

Adding organic matter year after year will slowly improve our soils, but erosion, crop harvesting, and other removal of plant matter will work against this. That is why it is great to compost on-site as much garden waste as one can. It is best to do this before buying it by the bagful or truck load, though of course, most avid gardeners will do both sooner or later.

I know, this a long post, and you may already know much of this, but I thought it would be helpful to set it down for other readers as well.

Yes, I've been adding organic materials for a few years with good results. But, everything I've been adding (manure, grass clippings, leaves and chopped weeds) breaks down and becomes dense. I feel I need something that makes larger chunks that don't break down as quickly. Hopefully this allows better root propagation and drainage.

Looking for a loamy texture and what I typically see in loamy soil is pieces of twigs and bark etc. None of which is present in my soil. Now I could buy a chipper, gather branches and make my own amendment but, that's expensive and labor intensive. Much more efficient for me to drag the trailer to work and stop by the woodchip facility on the way home, then park the trailer next to the garden.

A quick word about drainage, it's normally not a problem for me but this has been an especially wet summer and I think the soil is retaining too much moisture allowing for fungal growth that's proving detrimental. I've had to defoliate my tomatoes up to 4 feet due to yellowing dying leaves and lost all but 1 cabbage to rot. This last week has been more normal and it shows, plants are looking much better. My garden no longer smells like saurkraut.

 

[Marck]

Many bagged soil amendments are made from "forest products", which usually means fine woody material. I've used them and have been happy with the results. all the same, that material will still break down in the soil within a year or two.

However, if you are planting perennial plants, a year or two is sufficient. The soil is loosened in the bed or planting hole during initial root establishment. After that, additional organic matter enters the soil system only via breakdown of mulch and leaf drop, root growth, and animal actions, such as earthworm tunneling. In nature, the twigs and bark are only in the forest duff and other upper layers. Some organic material such as grass clipping can driy into a dense mat. That may not be a real problem, but if it seems to be so, go in and shred it up with a cultivator or other tool.

If you are planting annual beds, such as vegetable garden, then you can till-in more organic material each year. Even then, some gardeners practice no-till or low-till methods where most of the organic matter is still added to the surface.

If you are experiencing soil compaction, try to keep to paths and stepping stones whenever possible. I only enter my beds for strictly necessary procedures and even then I usually stay to the stepping stones. Also avoid working after heavy rain or irrigation.

 

[Ruderunner]

Strictly a vegetable grower. And I realized that compaction might not be the best word to describe what I'm seeing. Yes, I do have physical compaction in my footpath and that's expected. But I also have it, to a lesser degree, around my plants. This isn't caused by physical damage but more from settling. I think I have too much fine material as a percentage of volume.

Think of how much space a pound of canning salt takes vs a pound of rock salt.

And I'm aware that woodchips will also break down, how long was one of my questions to begin with. If I have to add more annually that's OK.

My typical soil preparation is to toss leaves on the garden in fall, grass clippings in spring. This gets tilled in prior to planting. I till for the following reasons, breaking up the soil, mixing in the amendments and rotating the soil. That last step needs a bit of explanation. By rotating the soil I mean moving it around to prevent localized depletion, for example areas where I had tomatoes get dug and tossed into the big pile of soil in the center of the garden. This pile then gets dispersed across the plot and usually mounded into rows.

I also do crop rotating to the extent I can in the space available.

 

[roadrunner]

My soil is sand and doesn't compact nearly as much as clay; however, it does compact and I ruined a rototiller when I first started gardening, granted it was old.

What keeps my soil from compacting nowadays are all the forms of soil life that does the "tilling" for me. And to have soil life, you need to make habitat, that's where the mulch comes in, but also plants. If I'm not growing anything, I plant cover crops, which could be almost anything, including a bag of black-eyed peas bought at the grocery store.

This takes time, but it's the best way IMO, to build soil and healthy soil is not compacted. However, if you're tilling, it's destroying much of the life that is trying to take hold. I just throw the mulch on the ground and the soil life distributes it, including bringing it underground.

Even when I dig to bury food waste, I don't overturn the soil, rather I just scoop it up in the shovel, throw in the food waste and put the clump of soil on top. I only do that with meat, so the animals don't get it, other than that I throw other compostables under the mulch, it gets dispersed by the soil life.

The soil where I garden use to not have earthworms, because it was just too dry and sandy, but now it's all black gold with tons of worms, I never added, they just moved in. Let the worms and other organisms do the tilling for you.

 

[roadrunner]

BTW, here's a good video that compares different farming practices against Gabe Brown's regenerative farming practices and it shows how tilling causes compaction, which I know is kind of counterintuitive.

Gabe Brown also has some very interesting videos on Regenerative Farming, which doesn't involve tilling, but also many other things to do in order to build soil. He doesn't use fertilizers and when he allows his cattle to enter the fields as they drop their manure, he doesn't spread it around, he allows the soil life to do that, it all happens naturally, because of the biodiversity in his fields. Very interesting stuff.

The comparing of soils at different farms starts at the 35-minute point in the video

 

[DirtMechanic]

BTW, here's a good video that compares different farming practices against Gabe Brown's regenerative farming practices and it shows how tilling causes compaction, which I know is kind of counterintuitive.

Gabe Brown also has some very interesting videos on Regenerative Farming, which doesn't involve tilling, but also many other things to do in order to build soil. He doesn't use fertilizers and when he allows his cattle to enter the fields as they drop their manure, he doesn't spread it around, he allows the soil life to do that, it all happens naturally, because of the biodiversity in his fields. Very interesting stuff.

The comparing of soils at different farms starts at the 35-minute point in the video

I found it easier to explain that tilling causes fluffiness. Then the collapse in the rain causes compaction. But that is me trying to get my wife to not cultivate my hillrows.

 

[roadrunner]

When I first heard that tilling causes compaction it was counterintuitive and I had a hard time believing it. I get it now.

 

[Marck]

When I first heard that tilling causes compaction it was counterintuitive and I had a hard time believing it. I get it now.

When you need to till, always till and amend. Adding new material in helps relieve any structural breakdown and compaction.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

As the blades go round they chop out a tilled layer, then go flat across the bottom with the weight of the machine creating a solid compacted layer underneath it. There is nothing like digging it over with a fork, just take it slow and easy, each fork full is a step nearer completion.