Beautiful wood chips galore!

photos by Tina Saravia

I've been waiting for months. Then one day, in a seemingly serendipitous circumstance, I got a giant load of wood chips. We happened to be walking in the neighborhood in the middle of the day, which we don't usually do. The tree trimmers were just arriving. I asked them for the tree chips once they were done.

I could've gotten two loads if I had the room in the extra driveway.

It so happened that our next door neighbor needed to mulch a large area, so he got the second load.

We've been slowly working to spread the wood chips around the yard. We have a concrete area that gets flooded in heavy storms. That's been covered with a hill of wood chips to absorb the water. We also use the wood chips to cover muddy paths in the garden, and the chicken run.

The best part is, we also have enough wood chips to mulch everywhere, around the shrubs and the trees, the vegetable beds. The new mulch will continue to cut down on weeds, save us on watering and protect the plants from extreme temperatures.

Speaking of vegetable beds, I have to be careful not to mix the fresh wood chips into the soil as the woods chips will tie up nitrogen and make it unavailable to the plants. It's a mulch - goes on top; not a soil amendment - which mixes in with soil.

Here's a link that talks more on mulches: http://cesantaclara.ucanr.edu/files/238922.pdf