I have an abundance of
wood chips available. I probably get 200 yards a year, and can get more if for some reason that isn't
enough (which seems unlikely).
The issue I have is that they take up a lot of space, and they aren't really productive until they have degraded substantially, which takes years. I have been aging them in place where they will eventually support a silvopasture strip, but it means a delay in planting the
trees for a year or two, and I am trying to speed that up. They could be quickly aged with nitrogen addition, which I have tried using
deer carcasses, but it still takes a couple years because I don't turn the piles much, maybe once a year.
I noticed that squash and other vines grew as volunteers with minimal soil and in pretty fresh chips. They seem to scavenge nitrogen very well, and they were rampant and very healthy. This year I am trying to grow melons and squash right in the chips.
I made different size pockets in the chips. All chips are from last summer. I am trying to find the minimum amount of actual soil necessary to grow squash in the chip piles, which will provide squash and assist in the conversion to
compost. Hopefully I can be incredibly lazy next year!
The pockets range in size from literally a garden trowel size to pockets of 8 shovels of soil. The species of squash were literally mixed in a bag and randomly planted. They are all C moschata. Some squash plantings got the full three sisters treatment as well, using either flint corn or sorghum as the upright member and runner beans. As much as possible they get peed on until germination, but there is an upper limit to production and some probably got missed. I plan on that being a common input in future years, unless I go into kidney failure! Soil used was a mix of 2/3 fill dirt (basically clay), 1/3 compost and duff and whatever I have around.
So here are the pictures: