Mulch: Wood Chips
Organic farmers face a lot of struggles in combating weeds. Without the assistance of traditional herbicides used by conventional farmers, organic farmers have to be creative. Mulch is a great tool for weed suppression, but traditionally used plastic mulch does come with many drawbacks for environmental health. Using locally sourced and easily accessible decomposable material is the cheapest and sometimes most beneficial practice for your farm. Wood chips are one of those underutilized resources that can go a long way!
Using Locally Sourced Woodchips for Effective Weed Management is a resource created by SARE to address the challenges organic farmers face when it comes to weed control. This research was done by a farmer who wanted to see if wood chips could compete with plastic mulch in efficiency with weed suppression. Through this research, they found that weed mass was lowered, and yields improved!
Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners has two valuable articles on wood chips, Ramial Chips, and Too Many Wood Chips. These articles are focused on the use of ramial chips, which are made from small chopped branches. These chips can be used as an annual mulch or perennial mulch; however should be used with intention. Perennial crops such as blueberries work well with a woody mulch. Other wood chips not covered in these articles are industrial chips, which are created from industrial waste, or bark chips, which are a byproduct of logging and sawmill operations.
Wood Chips in Vegetable Production notes the wear and tear on the soil through vegetable production over time, decreasing its ability to retain nutrients and moisture. There are many common methods for maintaining and rebuilding the soil; a less common method is adding wood chips. This article uses two studies to ask the question: Can wood chips play a beneficial role in soil health?
Five Uses for the Mighty Wood Chip goes over how to use woodchips for mulch, including benefits and uses from an excerpt of The Woodchip Handbook. Details such as the size of your woodchips can determine how effective and how long they last. Knowing the variety of tree uses in your chips can also affect usage, and can even help to prevent some pests and diseases. Even something as basic as woodchips can be fine-tuned to meet the needs of your crops!
A great first video resource is How to Use Wood Chips in the Garden Dos and Donts is a video by No-Til Growers. This video goes over how to properly apply wood chips to your soil to properly manage nitrogen. Through this video, many creative ways to use woodchips are shown, including using them to capture nutrients and moisture lost through seedling trays, or even inoculating them with mushrooms for another crop in the fields. Another video resource is This is Why You Should Use Wood Chips, which covers five benefits of using arborist wood chips as mulch. The video goes more in-depth with the benefits of using woodchips to raise the nutrient levels in the soil, prevent erosion, suppress weeds, and help maintain soil temperatures and moisture levels.
This is only a chip in the pile of resources that are out there on the usage of wood chips! If you have a resource of wood chips as mulch, please help us build this mutual resource and add sources below. To learn more about other mulch types, check out the other blogs by NOFA-NH on cardboard mulch, leaf and grass mulch.
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This resource was funded in partnership with the Transition to Organic Partnership Program