Woodmaxx 8m Chipper

TnAndy · Jun 4, 2018

Been studying on how to turn clay to good garden soil, and one way seems to be using wood chips for mulch....just keep adding them year after year. Went to a presentation at the MEN fair couple months ago. Guy passed around a jar of his original dirt, then another after a year of wood chips, then another after 2nd year and so on. By the 3rd year, it was some darn good looking soil !

I just happen to have a good source of wood to make chips...slabs off my sawmill that here to fore had been going in a pile and burned when the pile got big enough and weather conditions permitted. I bought a WoodMaxx 8M tractor PTO driven chipper and plan to chip all my slabs from now on, as well as the normal accumulation of brush/tree tops around here. Cut about 1500 bdft of lumber last week, and saved all the slabs, plus I had some old poplar logs that were half rotted....cut them into stuff that will go in the chipper. It will handle up to 8" wide, and according to them, 6" thick....but I've found 3x6" is about the max slab it will handle without popping the shear bolt in the PTO.

Put a couple hours in this morning chipping what I'd set aside, probably ended up with a single axle dump truck load of chips. Pretty much filled one of my compost bunks, which are 8x10 x 3-4' deep.

747driver · Jun 4, 2018

You are off to a good start ! I have the WM 8H. I don't chip anything over 4 inches...the rest I use for firewood. The wife likes the freshly chipped pine for her flowerbeds. Use alot for all the trails we have here on our 25 acres. I just swapped the cutter blades for the first time. Had 30 hrs on the original ones. The chips were starting to get long and straggly .... So do you till them into the soil every so often ?

Stimw · Jun 4, 2018

You need to add the ashes from the burned wood to the mix also.

TnAndy · Jun 4, 2018

747driver said:
You are off to a good start ! I have the WM 8H. I don't chip anything over 4 inches...the rest I use for firewood. The wife likes the freshly chipped pine for her flowerbeds. Use alot for all the trails we have here on our 25 acres. I just swapped the cutter blades for the first time. Had 30 hrs on the original ones. The chips were starting to get long and straggly .... So do you till them into the soil every so often ?

I've just started putting them on the garden for mulch.....just got the chipper about a week ago. I plan to let them just lay this year, and till under next year, moving more and more away from tillage at all. These chips were about 95% poplar with a little white pine, neither of which I'd burn for fuel, just too little fuel value.

Good to know on how long your blades lasted.....was wondering how long before swap. I think I've got about 5 hours on it now, have to check the meter.

Budweiser John · Jun 4, 2018

I too have a Woodmax Chipper and use the chips along with sawdust horse bedding for soil enhancement.
It doesn’t take long st see some real improvement however, the decomposition of the chips sucks up a lot of nitrogen so crops requiring large amounts of nitrogen such as sweet corn will require supplemental nitrogen unless you compost the chips for a couple years first.
B. John