Wood Chips + Horse Manure + Time?

I've been looking at land to purchase in central GA. I know that once I actually purchase a property, I won't be able to actually build a house and live there for at least 1-2 years. Consequently, I won't be able to do other things like raise animals or have a garden until that time.

The "soil" at the places I've visited all appears to have mostly clay and not much organic matter. I've been kicking around in my head ways to build up the soil quality prior to me actually moving there and starting the garden. I have access to a pretty much a limitless supply of free wood chips and green horse manure. I was thinking about marking out the intended garden area (maybe 20'x100' to start) once I figure out where my house is going to go. Then just start piling on layers of the two materials and allowing them to breakdown for 1-2 years so that once I am able to actually start planting, I will have decent soil and not just clay.

Has anyone done anything similar to this or have thoughts on whether it would be a good idea? Some considerations I have thought about:
- How deep should I layer the materials so that they break down within a couple of years?
- Should I just do one thick layer of each, or should I do multiple thin layers of each?
- Would laying down cardboard first be beneficial, or no?
- Should I try sowing some kind of cover crop over these layers?
- I'm thinking that once I'm ready to start using the plot, I would run a tiller across it to really integrate everything and break up the soil for the first season

Let me know your thoughts! Thanks!

I think your project might be a perfect candidate for sheet mulching.

If you want to garden the area, and you have more than a year then you are in luck. I have found a love for sheet mulching if I have time. If you can accumulate clean cardboard/kraft paper and place it down on top of the area of the garden you can start smothering weed seeds. On top of this, you can place wood chips THICK and it will already start transforming the ground. I have done this for several gardening spaces with fantastic results.

I generally do three layers myself.

Against the Ground - Kraft Paper/Cardboard
2nd Layer - Compost
3rd Layer - Woodchip

Green horse manure can carry weed seeds, it really should be hot composted first and then it turns into an incredible garden amendment. It might take a little extra work but how about starting a large pile of horse manure/wood chip compost. While the ground gets smothered out and mellow, you cook the compost. Once the compost finishes, you can rake back the wood chip and till in the compost if that is your choice. Just be careful about the amount of wood chip that gets tilled in, especially if fresh, because there are discussions about wood temporarily tyeing up nitrogen if it is integrated into the soil.


My absolute favorite part of wood chipped beds is that weeding becomes kind of hilarious. I have popped out weeds with two fingers just gently tugging them. It makes the 'chore' into a game. I do not have heavy clay so it might not be as easy to start but it makes it a breeze for sure.

Chard,

Good thinking on preparing your soil prior to actually building.  I am certain that you can dramatically improve your soil in two years time by piling on the wood chips.

I have brown clay, not red clay, but the rest of what you said still applies to my land.  I once piled a huge pile of wood chips right on top of my garden bed and left it to sit over winter.  By spring it was hard to tell where the chips ended and the soil began as the two merged together.  The brown clay turned black, organic matter visibly increased and worms proliferated.  I got that after one winter.  I can only guess what you will get after two years.

Further, I agree wholeheartedly with all the suggestions that Tim already made.  He gave you his own experience with wood chips and I agree with his thoughts on horse manure.

All-in-all I think that you have a great opportunity.  Please keep us updated.

Eric

Chard Irking wrote:- I'm thinking that once I'm ready to start using the plot, I would run a tiller across it to really integrate everything and break up the soil for the first season

Sounds like great advanced planning!
Here are my thoughts: Tilling mixes up the soil and kills many of the microorganisms and particularly the fungi that most of our soils are poor in, and so if it was me, I'd skip that step.

However, you mention clay, and if the surface is compacted, I would consider digging pits a foot or so in diameter and however deep is easy to a max of 3 ft. I do one every 3-4 feet every direction in the proposed garden area. Fill these with wood chips mixed with the clay you removed and maybe mark them with a flag so you can pee on them anytime you're visiting? I would also consider finding out the appropriate time to add mushroom slurry to the wood chips as mushrooms will really help the process move along.

If you get horse shit, it is good to know what the horses have been eating.  Plenty of hay has been treated with persistent toxic gick that growies don't like, so unless you can be fairly sure the horses are on organic fields and eating organic hay and have organic bedding, I'd be worried you might regret it.

I used to get horse shit from a friend who was very careful what they ate. My experience suggested that it was fairly completely balanced for composting but that it benefitted from water rich greens being added (like veggie prep scraps from a local Thai Restaurant - not organic, but human safe at least). This encouraged the worms and helped add moisture which in the summer is needed here. Point is, wood chips likely want more nitrogen than horse shit will provide.

Again, from my experience, the fastest way to build soil is with plants, so I'd vote yes to the cover crop if you can get whatever cheap seeds will grow easily and need minimal care. A poly culture is generally better than a monoculture. Try to avoid anything that will be a future problem. Something as simple as the 3 Sisters - beans, corn and squash wouldn't go astray and if the goal is to build soil, don't try to get a crop, just chop and drop. (although I struggle with this as, those beans are sooo... tempting to add to dinner)

Soil that's low in carbon - read most of North America - can benefit from almost anything you try to add, so lastly, try not to fret too much, but observe what nature does and do your best.

I would also consider finding out the appropriate time to add mushroom slurry to the wood chips as mushrooms will really help the process move along.

Jay, can you elaborate on this? First time hearing about mushroom slurry. Neither my wife nor I enjoy mushrooms, so I am not too familiar with looking for them or using them. Is there a recipe you recommend? Type of mushroom? We do have friends who enjoy mushrooms so they definitely wouldn't complain if we had more popping up.

I appreciate everyone's input about the horse manure. I think just piling it up and composting it will be the best bet for now.

I also got to thinking about possibly adding wood ash depending on the acidity of the soil since we have a steady stream of that too. Anything I should be concerned about there besides altering the ph too drastically?

When y'all talk about "thick" layers of wood chips, what are we talking here? 4 inches? a foot? I hear some crazy numbers get thrown around and while I'm all about adding more, I assume there is some point of diminishing returns vs the effort of moving it and spreading it out.

Chard Irking wrote:

I would also consider finding out the appropriate time to add mushroom slurry to the wood chips as mushrooms will really help the process move along.

Jay, can you elaborate on this? First time hearing about mushroom slurry.

I haven't done this myself as I don't have a good spot and instead have just been moving the wild mushrooms around to "help" Mother Nature spread them a little.

However, I'd read this thread, https://permies.com/t/82798/composting/composting-wood-chips-chicken-litter  by Eric Hanson to learn all about the approaches, successes and failures from someone who's been there, done that!

A "thick" layer is likely to be a foot to two feet. That I *have* done! My preferred method is to use a garden fork and rubbermaid garbage cans and our lawn tractor and trailer if a lot of chips have to move a long way, or a decent dolly, if not going far.  Many people use wheelbarrows, but they're harder for me to push than a dolly. Distance, terrain, and weather can all be a factor.

A large enough pile of wood-chips if it's from a tree company that was pruning live trees with leaves, will heat up and the center will biodegrade and turn into compost if left long enough, without anything else added. Dry chips won't do that easily. However, that may not be the best compost for a veggie garden. I'd tend to save it for mulching around baby trees. Because we live in a fire risk area, we do a lot of chipping and shredding at times. Mushrooms have spontaneously shown up in the mound - but not ones that are edible.  I'm in the "you can never have enough carbon" camps, but that's my ecosystem talking!

I'd also suggest you wander over to the biochar forum: Biochar is a great way to lighten heavy clay soil and if you're burning wood anyway, the forum gives a number of ways to combine biochar making with other tasks like heating.

The timing of this post is great for me, because I have a delivery of ramial woodchips (Arborist Chip) coming and I am planning on starting up some new beds.

On the mushroom front, I would recommend finding some Winecap Spawn to put under the woodchips. Winecap mycelllium is 'aggressive' and can stand up to wild mushroom mycelium trying to take over ground. It is edible and palatable, but I rarely eat mine unless I have a recipe that I want to try. My personal vendor recommendation would be Northern Spore Wine Cap spawn.

The mushroom is easily identifiable and is a workhorse on transforming wood chip, leaves, hay, and other organic debris into something that plants can uptake. When you order the mushroom spawn, you end up receiving roughly a 5LB bag of woody material covered in white mycelium. Once your woodchips are where you want them, take that bag of mycelium and dropkick it. Okay maybe not dropkick it, but you are going to want to break it up into chunks. Take these chunks and 'plant' them in the woodchips but not into the dirt. You want it to be covered and protected from light. Deeper into the woodchips the better I have found. Cover them up, maybe water it in, and then forget about it.  Once I had one bed established, when the mushrooms flush I would take the fruiting bodies and spread them into new woodchip patches and spread the love. Some people will pulse them in water to create a slurry but for my personally I don't.

I would echo Jay in the recommendation for 1-2 feet. The first time you put it down, you are going to be thinking to yourself that it might be excessive but it is amazing how much the material packs down in due time. I did 6" to 1 foot for one of my first beds and it looks like I just coated it after a year with settling and mushroom activity. I'm going to be topping it off in fact! The ground underneath is great to work with.

I hope this might help.

Hey, I think that if you could work it for 2 years (really just  a few days and then 1.93 years of waiting...) you will be in a good spot when you move to the property.

I live on clay too. Here is what I would do, basically a shorter version of what I HAVE done but without doing everything 3 times and piecemeal.

Dig beds a foot deep (probably with a tractor) and remove half the soil, all the rocks. Refill with horse manure and the half of the dirt you saved. Also add a lot of biochar. Then I would cover with 4 inches of wood chips and 4 more inches of horse manure. Then, after the first year I would go back and plop another 2 inches of compost or composted manure and overseed the area with "soil builder mix". Try to get back and chop'n'drop all the plants you planted before they go to seed if you can. If not don't worry.

In my experience clay isn't bad to grow in after you loosen it up to something reasonable. My biggest thing is keeping the beds "in ground" as opposed to raised.

I have had 6/10 results with just 4 inches of woodchips and 2 of horse poo on top of the ground in a raised bed. So it really is just WC + HM + T

I appreciate everyone taking the time to provide inputs. I'll try to remember to update this post once I move out of the planning stage.

I have a feeling it will end up being a hybrid of what each of y'all recommended. Doing thick mulch for the garden beds while also composting horse manure as well as wood chips for future use in the garden or fruit trees (which I won't be able to plant in the ground until actually moving to the property due to the deer pressure).

I'm excited to try the mushroom approach. Glad y'all recommended it!

I think you’re fortunate to have two years before you want to plant your garden!
If you have ample woodchips and manure, you’re golden.

Here’s what I’d do ~ actually what I have done.

Mark off the planned beds.

Spread the woodchips and manure in layers ~
four to six inches of chips, and inch or two of manure, etc. Chips on the bottom in contact with the ground. Build the layers as deep as your time, your back, and your chips and manure can go.

While I’m a great fan of using cardboard on the bottom to kill sod, and feed worms, you’ll be going deep enough not to have to go to that trouble.

Regarding using fungus to break down the woodchips, it will come. In fact, it’s already there in the soil under your chips, in the chips themselves, and in the air.

If you see no fungal activity after the first year, which is unlikely, you could scrounge up rotting wood full of fungus in the woods and throw it on. But as I said, two years is time enough for the bacterial breakdown of the wood and manure followed by the fungal invasion.

There are threads here about hurrying up the process by complicated schemes of inoculating woodchips with expensive mushroom spores, and I trust that it indeed works. But like I said, you are truly blessed to have those two years!

By the way, Chard~

In your situation, with that much time, I would use fresh, hot manure, if that’s what I had. By the time you are ready to grow in it, it will be thoroughly composted.