Wood chips and soil..a couple questions...

[Bird]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( 1) Can I chip the root mass with the tree, provided most of the soil is off?
2) Can I chip/shred grape vines (have a LOT of those)
3) I have heavy clay soil. Can I use some of the chips as an amendment for the soil? )</font>

I know some folks have a problem with that, but I ran that sort of thing, including briar vines through the chipper and tilled it all directly into my vegetable garden. So my answer would be "yes" to all three.

 

[Soundguy]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( To topdress our yard this year, I bought 6,000# of composted zoo poop. A commercial operation near us composts it with wood and leaves. It's the best stuff I've ever seen for the clay soil we have)</font>

I compost the manauer and shavings that i clean out of my horse stalls. The horse maneuer is 'hot' when it comes to nitorgen. The wood shavings break down nicely. i can dig down a few feet into the pile to find 'old' material from a year ago.. and it is the best looking soil I have ever seen. I routinely load a bunch of it up and add it to some sandy areas in my pasture.. and it does work wonders.

Soundguy

 

[fractal]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( 3) I have heavy clay soil. Can I use some of the chips as an amendment for the soil? )</font>

I would not till wood chips into your soil. They will take forever to decompose. I would, and have, used wood chips as a top mulch and pathway material.

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I'm aware that the decomp of the wood robs nitrogen from the soil, is there a product I can easily till in to both aid in the decomp and help replenish nitrogen? Should I just not bother with the wood chips? )</font>

You could compost the wood chips, either by themselves with some nitrogen fertilizer tossed in or mixed with manure. Compost is great for adding organic material to any soil.

I have used pretty much every compost there is and have come to agree with the "old timers" who say "use whatever compost you can get cheap, and use lots of it". I.E. 2 yards of mushroom compost ($2.00/yard when I bought it, $5 minimum, my f350 groaned home as it was wet and heavy) is better than 1 yard of steer if the mushroom is cheaper. Not for the nutritional value, but for the organic biomass. There are sites out there full of compost conosuers who expound the benefits of chicken vs steer vs mushroom vs ..., and all have their points, especially if you are paying retail price for the composted and steam sterilized product in little plastic bags. Those points disappear when you can buy a yard of one type for less than the cost of a 1 cu ft bag of the other /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif