Bram Svensson

Thanks for your reply John!!

The chips are still quitte wet, the pine and spruce needles are still green. Good to hear that they will break down quicker after chipping. Could we speed up the decomposition proces even further by pouring urine over the chipped pile?

The rains during the growing season varry, a lot of small rains and some big rains. So we have to just monitor the situation well an act accordingly. or maybe sow a cover crop and mulch later when the woodchips are further decomposed?

Hello All,

Want to start with a compliment about this forum, it has been a great recourse for inspiration and information to me. After the theory comes practice and now things get stuck a bit in the planning phase of our forrest garden project.
We are planning to convert some of the pastures to forrest gardens. As we don't want to bite of more than we can shew, we start with a area of 1/4 acre (0,1 Ha).
As mulch during establishment we are serching for localy available materials: spild hay, horse manure and woodchips are available in big quantity's.

We are unsure if the woodchips we can get hold of are good to use. They are the branches and bad logs from a recent logging of part of the forest. It is a mixture of pine, spruce, birch and some Aspen. The material has been drying since august. A company is comming in a few weeks time to do the chipping and we will be applying them to the site after the ground have been prepaird, wich we are planning of doing step by step in the growing season with some pigs and a mulched covercrop.

From what we have read it is best to use fresh woodchips and we are unsure if these chips are frech enough to use?

Hope some of you has some good advise for us??

Much thanks in advance
Bram