Ramial wood chips, do you use them?

Anybody use ramial wood chips?

Dave Rogers in the Adirondacks of New York,  100 miles south of Montreal

I've been using wood chip mulches for about seven years and although I don't make a lot each year (I do it by hand) I'm pleased with the results especially on summer veg. I tend to concentrate the chips on aubergines which do really well and hardly ever need watering.

i thought i posted in here? oh well

are you talking chips for mulch, or ramial chipped wood as a soil amendment?

i have done the RCW amendment route a few times, like hugelkultur the soils are not so productive the first year, but after that the soil is amazingly fertile. it is imo one of the cheapest ways to increase soil fertility for a forest garden if time isnt an issue.

i totally love wood chips..also pulverized to near sawdust type as well like used for animal bedding.

I get what I can get, but I have a chipper now so I do chip my own wood chips when I have the time, but I have bought wood chips and animal bedding material in the past for my beds and it makes the soil so spongy and soft and holds a lot of water..

we also heat with wood so we have a lot of bark as well as char..so I use both of those items on the soil as well..bark also is great for organisms, after it has been down awhile you can lift some and find all kinds of lizards and critters under it.

Arborist chips are in high demand around here.  I love them and struggle to get enough for my purposes (I've imported around 50 yards so far).  Innoculate with edible mushrooms if they are fresh (for example King Stropharia).  Everyone uses them if they can.  We have to pester, bribe, and protect our sources.  One arborist has been stockpiling and selling at prices competitive with sifted bark mulch.  With biofuel soon all carbon sources will be competitive.  I don't use them in a tillage system or where non-fungal species are nitrogen dependant (mustard and spinich families).  Some worry about transfering pathenogenic fungi (laminated root rot in Doug Fir for example), but I have found no evidence either way.

Can anyone give a recommendation on a wood chipper? We have a HUGE amount of chipping to do this year and need a reliable HEAVY DUTY chipper to tackle the job. Thank you kindly

Sherri Lesley wrote:Can anyone give a recommendation on a wood chipper? We have a HUGE amount of chipping to do this year and need a reliable HEAVY DUTY chipper to tackle the job. Thank you kindly

Sherri, I have a wood chipper and my advice is to try to get your wood ships from a tree trimming company. It takes a lot of branches to just make a small pile of wood chips with a wood chipper. The amount you get vs labor put in just isn't worth it. Many tree trimming companies will unload at your place for free because it means that they don't have to pay landfill fees.

One of my readers sent me a set of links on using Ramial wood chips a little while back - I posted them here:

http://www.floridasurvivalgardening.com/2013/01/ramial-chipped-wood.html

Tons of info there.

As for my own use, I generally just make stick piles around trees and plants and let them rot in place. (Though if I had a source to get chips, I would take advantage of it.)

I am a big fan of ramial wood chips, especially when they are free!

The piles tend to heat up on their own and go through an initial white fungus phase which I believe helps future fungus to inoculate and turn the mulch eventually into organic matter that will enter the soil. I've utilized a lot of softwood ramial chip that have gone through this process to good effect.

I make my own when pruning.

For folks that don't know the term ramial:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramial_chipped_wood