4Real Forums: Gardening: Soil

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Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry

Topic: Gardening: Soil

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Angel
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Joined: April 22 2006
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Posted: March 27 2012 at 1:14pm \| IP Logged

Mackfam wrote:

JennGM wrote:

I'd love to have some info in writing. Hoping some day there will be a pamphlet or book. I'm all about books, don't-you-know?

I find myself wishing for this, too.

What a great icon! Can I just say, "Me, too"?

Do the wood chips make the soil too acidic?

I'm going to add our experience with mulch in short season gardens. We mulched for the winter (straw/leaves/chicken manure/wood chips (sometimes), but in order to warm the soil in the spring, we had to scrape the mulch off or turn it under. Otherwise my asparagus (for example) took a really long time to come up.

Here in MS in our raised beds we have a combination for soil. Our first beds started out with the composted horse manure and straw from our barn, which hadn't been cleaned out after the previous owners moved. In fact, when we moved in the remaining horse manure was like a selling point of the house!

Gardeners are weird.

Anyway, after that we've had garden/organic soil delivered. We layer that with compost from vegetable scraps and egg shells, chicken and rabbit manure, and straw. Straw as mulch to keep in moisture in the summer, and we fork it under every so often. We mulch our blueberries with pine needles.

It's not any system, though. We just add what we've got available at the time.

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Angela
Mom to 9, 7 boys and 2 girls
Three Plus Two

CrunchyMom
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Joined: Sept 03 2007
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Posted: March 27 2012 at 1:37pm \| IP Logged

Angel wrote:

Do the wood chips make the soil too acidic?

It isn't straight wood chips. I think you are supposed to compost them for some time, though they still look like wood chips when you add the layer. I need to rewatch the video, but you also add blood meal because the wood chips breaking down use the nitrogen in the soil.

I do wish there were a book. I need to read these things a few times and mull some to wrap my head around it well enough to feel confident in applying it.

We were going to forego the Mel's Mix for our raised beds AND this video had us rethinking our plans to install irrigation, but now I'm worrying that it would take either patience to wait on seasoned woodchips or more work in watering and stuff this year without having prepared wood chips on hand. The two beds we put in on Saturday in the rain along with a heavy rain Saturday night are already dry

, and it isn't even hot. Watering is my GLARING weakness as a gardener.

Weighing all the factors is tricky.

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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony

[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR

CrunchyMom
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Joined: Sept 03 2007
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Posted: March 27 2012 at 2:35pm \| IP Logged

Okay, so my nap time research also found that the reason this method does not seem to make the soil too acid is that the wood chips are kept as a mulching layer on top--not mixed into the planting soil. The chips break down above where the plants are growing, and the nutrients wash in with rain. This is also why, while you do have to supplement nitrogen at the start, generally speaking, the woodchip mulch is breaking down above the soil and not using the nitrogen as it would if mixed into it.

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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony

[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR

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