We Covered 1/2 the Garden in Wood Chips | 2 Years Later Soil Tests Reveals the Impact

Putting the cardboard down, probably suppressed biological activity that would have broken down the wood chips and increased nutrients in your soil. I have raised beds, and when I added some beds a couple years ago, I filled them half way with wood chips, and put compost over that. All the wood chips are gone. They’ve all rotted away and increased my nutrients in my beds. I’m pretty sure it was being in contact with the compost that did the trick. I still amend my beds with fertilizer, lime and compost but my soil is rich and crumbly.

I think the cardboard defeats the purpouse of the wood chips. They should go directly on the soil in my experience.

Hurry up get to the results

Living in a very Hot area like its been 100 to 115 for 20 days I have to use wood trelis and twine the heat makes steal wire cook the vine plants and I water the ground and wetting leaves drys very quickly 😊

I really wondered what kind of wood chips. Have been reading that pine mulch is best.

just so everyone knows sawdust is not equivalent to arborist wood chips, arborist wood chips being far superior because of the leaves being on the living branches still as they are chipped. Sawdust is not a great option as its one size a fine material and tends to clog up water retention, it doesn't have green in its dry dead state.

People are way too opinionated. You do what you want to do and I’ll do what I want to do or you could do à la cart pick and choose people need to stop being so dogmatic OMG let other people live to your opinion is not the only one in the world people great video thank you for sharing.

Sawdust chips are way different than mulch chips with the whole tree in it. It seems like there would be very little nutrients in just sawdust chips, other than everything in it chips from tree guys or a shredding place/

For the tiny amount people that think that Yahweh is intelligent regarding farming and rest instructions ( book of Leviticus), there's a 'no till' instruction every 7th year and in years 49&50, the only 2 year sequence. which I am experiencing now. I'll be confident to load up a layer of wood chips or wood shavings every 7th year when letting my soil rest again and go ahead and work them in during years 1 to 6 after watching this report.

Needles and leaves !!!! you're using sawdust, sawdust gives no life to the soil you have to have a mixture of leaves needles or living matter like chopped up wood chips from tree services that's what gives all of your soil all the nutrients it needs sawdust Really doesn't do anything so this IS not a back to eden garden!

The key to using wood chips properly as regards to improving one's soil structure is using as high of a percentage of ramial wood chips as it is possible to obtain.

Ramial wood chips are those that are chipped from branches, which are technically less than 3" in diameter, which are freshly cut, and which have all ALL of their green leaves attached to their respective branches/twigs. The green leaves provide a source of nitrogen, as well as various sugars that speed up the process of decomposition by a significant margin. In an ideal world, such as on Will Bonsall's farm in Maine, the ramial wood chips will be created from branches no more than 1.5" in diameter.

I personally used the wood chips from the tree trimming contractors in Baltimore City, mostly as a very thick mulch around my 24" tall raised beds. A layer measuring 10"-12" thick will quickly heat up, just as quickly start cooling down, and in 3-4 months be only 3-4 " thick. By the time winter is over in spring, those chips will be no more than 2" thick, will contain enormous quantities of very thick strands of white mycorrhizal fungi, and have broken down into a very respectable humus.

All could be alleviated by sowing live-mulched nitrogen-fixing clover for a green-mulch in the wood-chips. I used to do that when I had land, and simply turned the entire pre-winter into the soil and started the process again
In spring.

IMHO: YOU OUGHT TO TRY GROWING A DENSE "GREEN-MANURE/COVER CROP", LIKE "WHITE, OR CRIMSON" CLOVER"!...

WHEREABOUTS ARE YOU AT?... EACH "LOCALE" HAS UNIQUE SOIL CONDITIONS, AND MANY LARGE REGIONS HAVE SIMILAR "ISSUES" AS TO SOIL "QUALITY" & CHARACTERISTICS"......

I'm excited to see this year's results!

Very well explained. Appreciate the work you put into this video.

Cardboard is fine, worms consume it and they turn it into worm castings, it attracts the worms to your garden. If you don’t have worms in your garden, it’s telling if the quality! I raise worms for worm castings to use myself and to sell, I’ve got about 45,000 worms right now and producing 70-80 lbs of vermicompost per week, although I feed less than I could to make sure I don’t produce at a rate I can’t keep up with as far as amending my own gardens as well as selling what I know I usually sell in a given time frame! I’m in central Georgia, I grow many things, probably a lot more variety than most, 18 raised beds (5’ W x 20’ L x 1.5’ H) and several areas where I directly grow in the ground, for several watermelon varieties, pumpkins, certain squash varieties, Cantaloupes and some others. Anyhow, I use RxSoil, which is a mail in test. My soil stays pretty consistent, beds and ground, right around the bottom side of the high range across the board, I don’t use anything synthetic, just compost and worm castings, and wheat straw most years if I can’t get rice straw.

Plant soy beans, that will add lots of nitrogen into the soil.

wood chips mulch for ground cover around trees/bushes - is it a good idea?

Wood chips + urea is god mode garden. Can't trust compost hay or straw or manure these days. Better off going chemical nitrogen route

Should put a thick layer of compost ontop of cardboard

I have a bunny and use his poop in a compost pile. I use shredded paper in his litter box as well as hay since the paper is more absorbant.
It all gets put with kitchen scraps, leaves, grass clippings and yard waste in my compost pile.
Is bunny poop good for the garden?
Can I use just the straight poop in the soil near plants or should it be composted for months/years first?

Did you sample just one spot in each place or a few and then add them together? And same depth for all?

I wonder if the local county farm extension office would do the testing for free?

The biggest mistake people make with wood chip gardening is watching the Back to Eden garden documentary but not actually seeing what’s in front of their face and making up what they think they are seeing as “the method” and implementing their made up method and then failing and blame the original documentary method that was shown. There are two separate land areas in the video, a large Orchard which is 30 years old in 2010 when filmed and a smaller Garden which is 15 years old in 2010 when filmed. ONLY the Orchard gets raw arborist wood chips added to it and when first set up he initially laid down raw arborist wood chips to a depth of 12 inches. The color of the ground in the Orchard is light and not dark. Paul never has added fertilizers or chicken manure to the Orchard area. The Garden area on the other hand ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT get raw arborist wood chips, raw sawdust or other crazy materials I have seen people using. The Garden gets aged already composted wood chips ground up and combined with general green waste that are then screened down to a small size removing all the large left over pieces. Paul rakes this aged composted and screened dark material carefully to a depth of just 2 inches. The Garden area also gets constantly amended with ALREADY COMPOSTED Chicken Manure, also screened and applied of a rate of 1/2 to 1 inch. Since Paul has been doing this for so many years, he says he needs to add less fertilizer every year and less often over time. After 15 years he was applying it every second year but before then he was applying it EVERY year to the garden area. The top surface of the Garden area is completely dark, full of heaps of manure nitrogen. Those are two completely different growing environments. There are only two times Paul added organic matter to his property in the video and those are exactly what he shows. Everyone with failed implementations need to go back and rewatch the documentary like a Hawk and see exactly where he says to do their made up in their mind methods instead of what he actually shows and teaches in the documentary and expect the get the exact same results from their methods their very first year as his now 43 year old Orchard and 28 year old Garden have been achieving when using the methods he actually showed and explained in the documentary. This is not a criticism of the video here but of everyone involved including the commenters all passing on what they think was the method and doing a disservice to those they they are trying to be helpful to.

Wood chips take years to break down. 2 years is just getting started.

I love to get free wood chips from chip drop and spread it under my flower beds. This keeps the weeds down, moisture in and keeps the soil from crusting from rain, etc. I don't put it in my veggie raised beds though I use ground up leaves or a cover crop over winter.

especially when natural farming techniques are concerned; those soil tests are next to worthless.

Awe Melissa,

You're a kick!!!!! I appreciate the 2-year follow-up as well as the comparison to the results of under your high tunnel. As I watched I kept thinking of James in New Jersey who went from cardboard to construction paper. I also kept thinking of nitrogen fixers ranging including beans, clover and comfrey. I also encourage to do another experiment... does the type of bark matter i.e. alder v. maple v. pine?

Our shy 2-acres on the Skagit up here on the other side of Marblemount has rested so we are just now starting to clear her as we transform her into a Food Forest, As we do I have been strongly encouraging my son and many of my grandchildren to not just watch but LISTEN to you. You're entertaining, informative AND because you live up here so what effects you effects us too.

I wanted you to know that we not only LOVE the episode when you interviewed your Dad but that your personal story is cool too. Lord knows I've tried to share the stories with everyone I can think of living "Down Below" in the cities to my daughter-on-law who seems excited to move up here shortly after she (& my son of course) have their next baby late this summer.

Nope, it's NOT EASY, but buy some land, work two jobs if you have to... earn what you have and somewhere in the middle of life you'll be able to build a new home on your land. Eventually, you'll even be able to buy some places around you as you expand (lol). YOU & YOUR'S are the living examples for my own generations of what can be achieved IF they are willing to work for it.

Now I have one question so I don't have to scroll through all of your videos. What is the name of the place you score your coffee from on Camano Island?

I look forward to your response &, in the meantime, THANKS for ALL YOU DO & ENJOY!!!!!
😎👍

Of what I know is that soil test are only able to detect only soluble nutriments, that is to say that soil tests are rather useless. The best test is to evaluate the quantity of microorganises in the soil which are responsible of soil quality. The easiest way to mesure the quality of you soil is to count the number of worms in a shovelful. 4 and more is a good clue that you soil is fertile. More fertile it is and more nitrogen the bacterias can put in the soi.

Rabbit manure is gold!

Sawdust is not the same as wood chips.

I don't put wood chips in my gardien because it is produced by a chainsaw that is lubricated with pretrochemicals (oil) and for it would pollute my soil. In the future I will try to find natural lubricant.

Bottom line , woodchips are good for mulching and long term decomposing for compost .

She doesn't understand the nitrogen cycle well.. It fluctuates throughout the year and changes forms. Excessive nitrogen leads to problems. You want a slow release. The carbon to nitrogen ratio is important.

a new layer of wood chips...BUT.....not a layer of new wood chips...chips need to decompose over a period of time so that they do ..not.. rob the soil of the nitrogen.

The back to eating method does not recommend the type chips that you put down. You're supposed to put down chopped up tree limbs that include the fines some of the greens and some broader pieces as well it is never supposed to be a homogeneous mix like you used by the way.

Tilling is fine is small plots, the big problem is with erosion on commercial operations that cover many acres.

I applaud your efforts and observations but I would suggest caution in not taking the soil test numbers too seriously. I have worked as a soil consultant for over 15 years and collected/reviewed hundreds of soil samples. It is far from an exact science! You could gather a 2nd set of samples and it would likely suprise you how different the results would be. A different lab would also give different results. How the sample was collected can make a big difference, like were ANY wood chips included with the sample?

Long term trends are informative, if the sampling and testing procedures remain the same (collect cores from the "exact" same spots and at the same time of the year).

Bottom line, don't use a magnifying glass to read a mark made by a dull crayon 🙂

Nice video! But, wood chips are not saw dust. Most saw dust comes from dried pine trees, with no life or moisture in them; while wood chips can contain green matter, plenty of life, and lots of water. If saw dust had just a minimal impact on the soil, woods chips would have a much less impact.

I’m no expert but i’d say that there a couple of things you are not understanding properly..
1. wood chip is not good for veg garden.. straw is better.. wood chip for fruit trees.
wood chip produces a fungal dominant soil and straw a bacteria dominant soil.
2. your nitrogen levels are not low.. every soil on this planet contains more than enough of every mineral any plant needs.. you do not need to amend by adding more nitrogen.. If you plants are struggling it’s the life that needs to be amended not the minerals.. when you have the right balance of fungal, bacterial, insect and worm etc they will extract and deliver everything the plants need in a. form they can digest.. Don’t dig is good but don’t compact either.. make some clear paths and stick to them..

Hey Melissa, first and foremost, Thank you for posting this video. You did an amazing job at explaining what you did and the results you got. 2nd, it blows my mind how many people commented about how you didn't do this, didn't do that, or you need to do this or that. I'm not seeing the Karens going through all the work you did to make a video. 🙄
People just can't seem to click off the video and find one they agree with.
Thank you again. I found it very informative. ✌️

Hi Melissa! I have a question about Ollas? I live in the PWN as well in 8a growing region and wonder if they would be a great addition to my raised garden beds. I have NEVER gardened before and the thought of not over watering or under watering plants with this system is very enticing! Do you have any experience with them to help me decide? Also, dragging a hose out to the bed versus just filling these also seems smart... I

i love woodchips i find them amazing for a number of reasons. its worked wonders in my home garden, However I dont think it works for carrots and pasnips

Thanks for doing this! I just started collecting wood in my free time then chip it all. Glad I found your video! It seems buying a chipper is worth it after all. I saw a video where peas (if I remember it correctly) kickstart the nitrogen cycle again. You may consider to make the tunnels portable so you can move peas/nitrogen restarting plants to every bed after harvest. Good luck!

If you used sawdust, that is not as good as actually using tree trimmings chips with mixed green and brown components. Also, ,skipping the compost means feeding the soil life a lot less, so that can delay the breakdown of the cellulose. Thanks for sharing!

Nitrogen testing is very inaccurate as moisture and time of day can alter results. The number that soil scientists use are from organic matter to assess nitrogen.

Melissa thanks for good work and sharing with us your work.
I see you are not using the correct woodchips. It is more you are using wood shavings and sawdust that is why nitrogen is low because you voided green leaves in wood chips.
Anyway you have answered some of my concerns. Thank you and God bless you