Is using only deciduous woodchip critical? Whats your personal experience

Hi,

I have been reading the laval university documentation regarding how deceduius trees only should be used for woodchip mulches due to the problems with confier trees.

My issue is that I can't easily get purely deciduous trees - It's a total mix of the two.

Have people on this forum encountered any significant problem using confier woodchips or is it working out OK for you?

Thanks

Steve

I've used both and had no notable problems with either (other than more slugs than I am used to). When we have had a LOT of conifer I have spread it mostly on paths, but I don't know if that precaution is necessary.

I use whatever I can get. Around here it has been loads that are mostly or all evergreen. Never had any problems. Of course my soil is alkaline to begin with and it seems to be too dry for slugs and snails to reach problem levels.

Fir, hemlock, and cedar have all been fine for me! I use heavily for woody perennials.

I use what I can get, nine out of ten times I am receiving mostly conifer chip.

If I have the time, I will leave the chips in a pile so that the initial fungus colonies can establish and start working on breaking down the chip. I've found that the piled chip that has the initial white/ashy dust all over it tends to get colonized by other mushrooms much faster than if I spread fresh chip right away. I believe it has something to do with the succession of decomposers working down the chip to release nutrients.

I'm happy to receive whatever I can. I've noticed no problem with pests or acidification.

Here also, it's pretty much impossible to get "straight run" chips. I use what I can get.

If we're chipping stuff on our own land, I will make some effort to segregate cedar and use it for paths or mulch under cedar itself. For years I used cedar mulch for a path north of our winter creek which got totally muddy in the winter. It may have taken longer to break down than deciduous chips, but it did and the grass is totally covering the path and the path no longer turns into a swamp.

My theory is that if you're using plants that are indigenous and from the area, the decomposers - insects, microbes and mycelia - are familiar with those plants and happy to chew on them. That doesn't mean that I'd put quantities of cedar chips on a growie bed, or cedar branches in a hugel, but I don't sweat the small stuff.

Hi Steve.

If your soil is acid after laying down conifer wood chips, it was acid before the ships were there in the first place.  The fear of acidification of soils from conifers is terribly overblown.


And then sadly, this fear leads to people not putting down chips.  And wood chips can do absolute wonders for the soil beneath.  At this point in my gardening journey, wood chips are an essential staple to any garden bed that I will make.

I am definitely more obsessive than the typical gardener, but my standard practice now is to lay down cardboard in order to starve existing plants of light.  The next step will be to lay down a 6" layer of wood chips that come from an extensive brush-clearing project on my property.  From there, I inoculate the chips with Wine Cap spawn and plant tomatoes into fertile holes in the chips.  The tomatoes provide the mushrooms with shade and the mushrooms break down the wood into fantastic garden bedding for the tomatoes.  The process takes about a year, but the good part is that you can get good use of the bed even as the wood chips are being devoured,

After a year(ish), when I dig into the bed, the remains of the chips look more like coffee grounds than wood chips.  And they kinda merge into the soil, but there is no clear boundary.  Worms move organic matter back and forth from the chips down into the ground--my garden beds seethed with worms!

So lay down those chips!  Even if you don't go my admittedly eccentric route, microbial action from the soil will do much of what I do with the Wine Caps, but on a longer scale.


Go Wood Chips!!

Eric