Soil improvement, the hard way?

[Creek chub]

My mom had a tree taken down and the stump ground up. To save her some $, I got the contractor to leave what wrongly assumed would be chips and I’d clean them up. Well, I go by her house today and there’s a Volkswagen big sized mound of some chips but mostly dirt.

On the road to my cabin, I keep it brush hogged about 25 yards on each side of the road. I’ve planted WR last fall in a couple of the better portions. The less than desirable parts are fairly rocky with sizes no bigger than an old school lunch box but aren’t sticking up above grade an inch at most. The dirt from my mom’s looks way better than the cabin road. Could I see some results by top dressing the bad areas of the road side with the excess dirt and get in a summer annual crop?

 

[THE LLC]

Doubt it. Wood chips take a TON of nitrogen to break down. Will rob anything you plant for a while. Plus stuff like that needs a LOT of lime.

 

[coolbrze0]

Doubt it. Wood chips take a TON of nitrogen to break down. Will rob anything you plant for a while. Plus stuff like that needs a LOT of lime.

What the LLC said. I'm an arborist & when we grind stumps, you really gotta remove most everything down to a decent depth or even the grass that's planted on 6" of soil/compost will turn yellow!

 

[coolbrze0]

With that being said... they say WR will grow just about anywhere

 

[Creek chub]

Doubt it. Wood chips take a TON of nitrogen to break down. Will rob anything you plant for a while. Plus stuff like that needs a LOT of lime.

Just guessing, it’s probably 90% dirt and rest chips. I’ve gotta do something with and hate to dump it over a bank.

 

[Creek chub]

With that being said... they say WR will grow just about anywhere

I’ve still got a 50# bag. May play with a spring planting and disc under what grows in a couple months and plant buckwheat

 

[Jack Terpack]

A good friend of mine had a plot behind his cabin that was terrible soil. Nothing would grow there. He happened to be at a small sawmill one day and noticed a gigantic pile of sawdust in the back. He talked the guy into selling him a couple truckloads. Well, they were tri-axle trucks that showed up and dumped two full loads. He spread it with his tractor then went in and tilled it under. Haven't been able to get anything to grow at all. That was three years ago. He said the sawdust was about three inches thick to start with. Like LLC said, it takes a long time and a lot of nitrogen for it to decompose. I have five huge piles behind my house that the electric company left me when the cleared the ROW through my property. IT's been sitting for two years now. I use it as mulch around the edge of one plot just to keep the weeds down.

 

[Creek chub]

I’ll take before and after pics of my experiment

 

[Mennoniteman]

It's good stuff for a plot, but you need to spread it out to a very thin layer. Otherwise, like the guys said, nothing good will grow, it's too acidic. The amish use mostly sawdust for horse bedding anymore, and the end result all goes on the fields, and it's good for the soil, if applied very sparingly, along with other nutrients and amendments.

 

[Tap]

What kind of tree was it? I wouldn't dump certain species like black walnut on my plots. BW has juglone which prevents lots of other stuff from growing. I assume there are other species with the same trait. The chips from one single tree may not contain enough juglone to really make a big difference, but why use it at all? Check on the tree variety before you spread it's chips.

 

[Chainsaw]

Wood chips are spread around our day lilies six to 12 inches thick on top of four sheets of newspaper. The newspaper lasts a year and then decomposes. And we just keep adding more wood chips to help smother weed growth. I don't believe the wood chips do use up the nitrogen in the soil as they decompose simply because they are on top of the soil and not in it. The daylilies grow great and the soil stays moist in the driest of conditions.
As Tap posted though bad things can be transported in with wood chips. Our wood chips come from along the roads from up to 10 miles away so it has everything in it including seeds from all types of trees. We keep it in a huge pile and spray it with Roundup as needed to kill all of the sprouting things. It is not used in the garden until it has sat for at least a year or two. Many of the wood chips I see at stores for sale come from the same original sources and thus come from every type of tree and shrub in the area.

Thus I think it best to pile it and spread it after it breaks down for plots. We have a 100 percent sawdust pile on top of the ground and it may have taken five years before the weeds starting growing in it but now it grows weeds just as good as the horse manure/hay pile. Once the sawdust pile started growing weeds I would then put it in my plots.

 

[Tap]

Wood chips are spread around our day lilies six to 12 inches thick on top of four sheets of newspaper. The newspaper lasts a year and then decomposes. And we just keep adding more wood chips to help smother weed growth. I don't believe the wood chips do use up the nitrogen in the soil as they decompose simply because they are on top of the soil and not in it. The daylilies grow great and the soil stays moist in the driest of conditions.
As Tap posted though bad things can be transported in with wood chips. Our wood chips come from along the roads from up to 10 miles away so it has everything in it including seeds from all types of trees. We keep it in a huge pile and spray it with Roundup as needed to kill all of the sprouting things. It is not used in the garden until it has sat for at least a year or two. Many of the wood chips I see at stores for sale come from the same original sources and thus come from every type of tree and shrub in the area.

Thus I think it best to pile it and spread it after it breaks down for plots. We have a 100 percent sawdust pile on top of the ground and it may have taken five years before the weeds starting growing in it but now it grows weeds just as good as the horse manure/hay pile. Once the sawdust pile starting growing weeds I would then put it in my plots.

The OP asked about chips from a known stump, but chips from tree services that are maintaining power lines is a whole different animal. There can be a nightmare of seed species mixed in with those chips...Mile a Minute, Oriental Bittersweet, Tree of Heaven, invasive grapes... lots of unwanted seeds can be in a pile of chips from the tree service.

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[Chainsaw]

The OP asked about chips from a known stump, but chips from tree services that are maintaining power lines is a whole different animal. There can be a nightmare of seed species mixed in with those chips...Mile a Minute, Oriental Bittersweet, Tree of Heaven, invasive grapes... lots of unwanted seeds can be in a pile of chips from the tree service.

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Absolutely Tap. Having them germinate in the pile and Roundup spraying seems to work out okay for me though.

 

[Tap]

Absolutely Tap. Having them germinate in the pile and Roundup spraying seems to work out okay for me though.

The best way to handle a pile is to turn it occasionally to introduce O2 and heat it up. That assures seeds will either cook and lose viability, or, it allows them to sprout so they can be killed.
A seed can lay deep in an unturned pile and remain viable for several years. Mile a Minute can remain viable for 7 years. And not that rag weed seed would ever be in a mulch pile, its seeds can remain viable for 80 YEARS.

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[Chainsaw]

I do regularly push up on the outside edges with the tractor bucket. However the pile contains about 900 yards of chips so the centers once buried don't get turned again. The piles get so hot internally that I wonder if any seeds internally could possibly survive. I keep the ground bare for a large area around the outside of the pile just in case it ever caught itself on fire.

 

[Creek chub]

What kind of tree was it? I wouldn't dump certain species like black walnut on my plots. BW has juglone which prevents lots of other stuff from growing. I assume there are other species with the same trait. The chips from one single tree may not contain enough juglone to really make a big difference, but why use it at all? Check on the tree variety before you spread it's chips.

The tree was a red maple

 

[Tap]

The tree was a red maple

No issues with that species.
I agree with Chainsaw...compost the chips.
Another use for chip piles is to use them for short term "planting" of bare root trees...basically storage until you can get them in the ground.


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[Creek chub]

No issues with that species.
I agree with Chainsaw...compost the chips.
Another use for chip piles is to use them for short term "planting" of bare root trees...basically storage until you can get them in the ground.


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I’m kind of in a pinch a need to get the pile moved ASAP. There is way more dirt than chips in the pile. I spread one load today on the road side. The road side soil is crappy. If the chip/soil combo isn’t an near term improvement I’m ok with that. I’ll experiment with growing something there next month and be sure to lime and fertilize pretty heavy.

 

[Tap]

I’m kind of in a pinch a need to get the pile moved ASAP. There is way more dirt than chips in the pile. I spread one load today on the road side. The road side soil is crappy. If the chip/soil combo isn’t an near term improvement I’m ok with that. I’ll experiment with growing something there next month and be sure to lime and fertilize pretty heavy.

Hey, I have sweet clover and other assorted stuff that invades my limestone driveway (I paved it last year, so no more limestone now). I'm sure you can get something growing there...whether its a high quality forage might not happen, but it takes time to develop soil.
How is the soil moisture along that road? The chips will certainly help retain soil moisture which in some situations, can go a long way towards sustaining plantings that are soil builders.
I don't see anything wrong with your approach. Maybe not as good as decomposing the chips, but those chips will eventually increase the OM, and that's a good thing.

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[Creek chub]

Hey, I have sweet clover and other assorted stuff that invades my limestone driveway (I paved it last year, so no more limestone now). I'm sure you can get something growing there...whether its a high quality forage might not happen, but it takes time to develop soil.
How is the soil moisture along that road? The chips will certainly help retain soil moisture which in some situations, can go a long way towards sustaining plantings that are soil builders.
I don't see anything wrong with your approach. Maybe not as good as decomposing the chips, but those chips will eventually increase the OM, and that's a good thing.

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The soil is sandy and dries quickly after rains.