wood chip compost

I made a mistake this year when ordering wood chips.  I got a nice size pile, and a couple days later I got a mountain of wood chips.  My family was horrified, but I thought it was funny.  In all honesty I can use it all and probably more.  It's just going to take time. We have a bobcat that helps a lot, but it's not working at the moment, so moving the chips by hand one wheelbarrow at a time is a job.  To appease my family I put the word out to family and friends that they were welcome to help themselves to the wood chips.  This was great for some who don't have the space for a large wood chip drop.
I never have enough compost. I totally suck at making compost.  I have tried every method I have come across.  I keep trying though.  Right now I have a garbage can composter that I'm trying to remember to water because even after a year I did not have finished compost.  This is my favorite because I can keep it sort of close to the back door, and the one my family will actually use.  I also have the large 3 pallet compost pile.  I'm still in the filling up stage.  I try to remember to water it now and then.  Soon I will need to turn it and see if I can actually get it working.  
So at this point I'm buying all of my compost.  It's expensive.  I work at a co-op that gives up a great discount, and still it's costing a little over 5.00 for a 1.5 cf. bag. It takes a lot of bags just to keep the soil level in the raised beds decent.  Plus part of the benefits of using compost is that it's loaded with life and beneficial organisms.  I have my doubts organic bagged compost have much life.  My local dump has cheap, maybe even free (I live in Ca. so I doubt it, nothing is free here). I just don't want to use compost full of chemicals, antibiotics, and all kinds of other medications.  There's just to much unknown stuff in it I know I don't want.  I would rather buy dead compost and add worm casting tea to the beds.
I was thinking the other day I could make a few smaller woodchip mounds.  Water, and turn them now and then.  I don't need them to become soil, just compost enough so I can add it to the soil without robbing the beds of nitrogen.  You may be thinking Jen just leave the pile and it will do that on it's own.  Well it will eventually, but in our dry heat it takes a very very long time.  I have tested it.  I had a pretty large pile I didn't get to. The pile had been sitting there 2 years, and the chips had only become soil like on the bottom 2" to 3"  My though is to make piles I can water and turn to speed up the process.  I hope to throw in some garden scraps, leaves, chicken manure, what ever I have along the way.
how big does the pile have to be?  Will 3'X3'X3' do the job?  The goal is to get them small enough to make it easier to water, and turn now and then. But large enough to compost.  My husbands disabled, I work full time, have dogs, cats, chickens, and more gardens a sane person would have.  I'm not going to be watering and turning these piles every week. as a side note I have more then enough places to put the wood chips. I'm doing this to get rid of them, but thinking its another great way to use them.
I'm open to comments, and or suggestions   will it work? Would it be a total waist of time?            
Thanks

I'm in Florida, I ended up with a lot of chips once I layered them 6 inches deep. Wood composts fast here though.

Jen,

I compost in a bin and also in piles: 3x3x2. For piles I use the sheep barn bedding which is red gum eucalyptus chips. After two months sheep completely pulverize the chips with their hooves. Eucalyptus is very rot resistant, but if pulverized, mixed with their feces and urine it turns into perfect soil after half a year. I mix it with my sandy loam and use as potting mix. If I left wood chips mixed with brown matter they would not decompose even with watering, but for other tree species it could work. The problem with pile is that it will lose moisture quickly in dry environment. You need a lot of nitrogen for wood to decompose.
If you can, get sheep or goats. They help a lot. A week ago I cleaned the barn and got 12 full wheelbarrows of manure, some partially composted and used it to amend my upper garden for fall planting.

Mixing wood chips with high Nitrogen items will help. I used to run the largest organic pastured poultry farm in the country (in New Mexico), and all of the blood, guts, and feathers from “harvest” would be mixed in with wood chips in big piles. This would break down into beautiful compost that was spread over the fields. Warning.. it smelled terrible! Haha.. I’m sure that manure would serve this same purpose, and smell more like a barnyard than a graveyard.

Just mulch the heck out of everything, and enjoy it looking and smelling nice and not having any weeds. In 3 years you’ll have amazing soil.

You can also use a deep litter method in the coop or chicken run, whatever’s easier, and even mix grain into the woodchips so the chickens will scratch and turn it.  Video of this here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbhyc__Uh_o

It may take awhile but it can’t not compost.  

Hi Jen,
Sounds like a wonderful problem :), where I am, it is a little easier, because it is a wetter climate, but I think you are on the right track with partial composting. I think this will make them more effective more quickly in the garden.

One thing that I want to mention about your concern with nitrogen. As long as you don't mix the woodchips into the soil, you will not need to worry about nitrogen depletion from the woodchips. If they sit on top, there is only a small portion that are in contact with the soil, to tie up the nitrogen. This will not be enough to worry about from a gardening stand point.

The easiest would probably be mixing in high nitrogen ingredients as has been suggested, and make a bunch of small piles, preferably under a tree for shade and access to fungus.

For a more elaborate plan, which wouldn't be too bad if you can get the bobcat working... is to put those chickens to work. If I had the time and equipment, I would put out a layer 4-5" deep and however large an area as your chickens can handle. I would ballpark 20sqft+ per chicken. Spread the woodchips and water well, and then wait a couple weeks. The bugs, worms, and micro organisms should have found it by then. Then let loose your chickens into that area. They will scratch and eat and poop and have a grand ole time. After a day or two, move the chickens off, use the bobcat to pile it up somewhere and repeat. Having all the manure and micro-organisms should help jump start your piles very well. Just repeat, as you can, until you run out of woodchips.

Put as much wood chips as you can in your chicken run. Between them scratching around and pooping in it that should expedite the process pretty quick.

An experiment I did last year was: I had our mobile coop of about 10 chickens in the same spot all winter, then in late spring I moved the chickens and put about 8 inches of wood chips where they were (a 15'x25' area) and just left it. As of right now, a little over a year later, there is only about 1 inch of wood chips left and under that is a rich organic soil full of worms. The few perennials and trees I planted into it have exploded in growth. There's a speckled alder that is about 9 ft tall and it was a 8 inch seedling last year. There's also a sawtooth sunflower (perennial) I transplanted this spring that is probably close to 11 ft tall. And just for the record, I added no fertilizers or anything. I'm blown away at the growth I've seen.

In short, chicken poo + wood chips + 8-12 months = rich soil!

Hope that helps

I have done half and half with horse manure. It works pretty good. In a year I got Jerusalem Artichoke to grow in it pretty good. The Tomatoes started off good but then they hit about a foot high and just died.

I did my whole backyard 4" deep in chips when we bought the place cause of the mud. It worked pretty great. Probably would have worked better if most of the soil didn't wash/blow away as soon as it was created...

I knew a farmer who used to just let a drip line go on top of a 10 yard pile and he said it composted pretty fast that way. He had a lot of water to waste apparently.



I got my first load of chips a month ago! After 10 times of the tree guys saying yes, but meaning no, when I would ask them to dump before they left my road.....

Thanks for all the great responses.
Cristobal I have actually always wanted to get a goat.  Unfortunately I just can't do it at this time.  I only have just under an acer, which has 2 houses, a barn a garage and a couple of sheds, so there isn't a lot of grazing room.  I also can't afford another mouth to feed, or the time to feed it.  Maybe someday I can figure something out.  I have thought about a couple of rabbits.  Good manure for the garden. They don't need much space and considering I can supplement the feed with garden veggies, may not cost to much to feed.  I'm still in the thinking stage.  I would have to build a hutch, and have to feed, water and care for them. (I imagine keeping them cool in the summer will be a challenge.)

Mike I do have wood chips all over.  It's my primary way to prevent weeds and build great soil.

Matt Most of my raised beds are hugel beets built with old fire wood we didn't use.  The good and bad news is it's braking down very fast.  Good because it's building wonderful soil, bad because it's dropped soil level about 8" to 10".  That is way to much to mulch. I have to add more soil.
My coop is in a place that will allow the bobcat to dump wood chips in, but can't get them out.  I would have to do that by hand.  But I'm glad you brought that up because last year my son leveled some ground and moved a wood chip pile and mixed them up.  I didn't want to use them because it was full of weeds.  The solution was to dump the hole lot in the chicken yard.  They had a grand time spreading out that pile. No weeds grew.  Besides a thin layer on top you would never know they were there.  So that means I could dig soil from the chicken yard.  The chickens will be thrilled, nothing better then loose dirt to play in.  After they have had there fun, I will fill the holes with new wood chips.

I still plan to make some piles.  I will probably try to gather chicken poop to toss in when I get the chance.  Mean while I will use some of the soil in the chicken yard.  

Thanks for all your great comments and suggestions, you all helped a lot.  

Hi Jen,

Every time I have an excess amount of wood products, my mind always goes to biochar. Burning wood products like the wood chips you mention can be an excellent means of volume reduction and still produce a valuable soil amendment. Biochar is one of the key components of the very fertile Terra Preta soils created in the Amazon by the indigenous peoples of the region and is not too difficult to make. As long as you properly inoculate it with a compost tea or let it mingle with a compost pile, you're golden! I also like to produce things like charcoal and wood ash, not as a soil amendment necessarily, but for other homestead purposes !

Hope this helps,
Eric S.

In broad strokes you have a bunch of carbon the ground and over time it will interact with nitrogen and break down. I'm in an arid mountain area so with so little moisture a pile of wood chips will remain relatively stable for a long time.

What speeds it up dramatically is nitrogen. You can use blood meal ($$$, but very effective), coffee grinds (maybe free if you can get them from a coffee shop), veg table scraps (free, but not much usually). Also throw a few literally spoonfulls (you don't need much) of a good dark soil that has a lot of microbial activity from your area in there to inoculate things.

My piles are probably 4x4x4 but 3x3x3 would be fine. I just dump stuff on top, then shovel the chips from the bottom on top. Or I dump it on the side and pull the top down on top of it. Every month or two I go out and invert them, shoveling the tops onto the dirt and then getting the was-bottom to be on top.

If you have nitrogen + carbon + moisture it can't *not* breakdown. What you'll start to see is black sections that smell earthy and are steaming.