Organic Ingredients – Woodchips

Wood chips are made from old logs and wood waste that are not suitable for milling for timber. Some trees are grown specifically for the production of woodchips for paper pulp manufacturing. Woodchips are also left over after roadside tree trimming or clearing around powerlines.

You can also make your own wood chips by trimming your own yard tree waste using a commercial chipper or shredder. Commercially available woodchips are often very coarse. A shredder will aid in reducing the size of the chip, allowing for a tighter weed suppressant.

Wood chips can be purchased from local nurseries or organic garden centres. They can also be purchased directly from a timber mill or wood chip production facility.

Naturally coloured wood chips are available. These look more like pine bark or a natural ground covering. One of the down sides to fresh woodchips is they look fake. There are various ways to colour woodchips but the most common and chemical free method is with a tea stain or with natural minerals. Be sure to ask your supplier what was used to colour them to ensure you maintain a chemical free organic garden.

  • Woodchips are used in the garden as an organic weed suppressant and ground cover. Newspaper or cardboard can be placed under woodchips to assist in preventing weed growth.
  • They can also be added to compost heaps. When using as an organic compost additive, I usually recommend putting them through a shredder for a second time to reduce their size. This allows them to break down much faster by increasing the surface area available to bacteria and worms. Fresh green lawn clippings should also be mixed through wood chips before adding them to a compost heap. The lawn clippings will help build up the heat a compost needs as well as adding necessary green material to the mix. Wood chips can pull nitrogen from your compost heap. Adding plenty of lawn clippings, chicken manure or other high nitrogen material will help replace depleted nitrogen.
  • Woodchips make an ideal covering for a garden path. They will help suppress weeds and they look natural as they decay.
  • Woodchips are an ideal ground cover under children’s play equipment. They provide a soft play area, help suppress weeds and prevent the ground from becoming muddy during wetter months.
  • Wood chips are ideally added to nesting boxes and the ground of chicken yards and in calf sheds on farms. They are an easy way of soaking up excess moisture and they are easy to shovel out and into a compost heap when finished.

May 29, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Organic materials

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.