How to best use wood chips on the old homestead

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Alaskajohn

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I will be using my wood chipper heavily this summer and I will be producing a massive amounts of wood chips. This will be willows and alders from this summers project of extending my wildfire protective standoff. I want to best utilize this byproduct.

I already have plans to use them for:

Filling holes around the homestead and trails
Bedding for pathways
Mulch
Composting for future use in gardens
Reducing odor in the outhouses

What other uses would you suggest?

I have a couple soft spots in my half mile long private dirt/rocky driveway. There are two locations where I am thinking of dumping a pick up load and mixing in dirt to help firm up the soft spots. Has anyone tried this? Even with doing this and the other items above, I will still have leftovers which I could simply leave as compost for future use.
 
I will be using my wood chipper heavily this summer and I will be producing a massive amounts of wood chips. This will be willows and alders from this summers project of extending my wildfire protective standoff. I want to best utilize this byproduct.

I already have plans to use them for:

Filling holes around the homestead and trails
Bedding for pathways
Mulch
Composting for future use in gardens
Reducing odor in the outhouses

What other uses would you suggest?

I have a couple soft spots in my half mile long private dirt/rocky driveway. There are two locations where I am thinking of dumping a pick up load and mixing in dirt to help firm up the soft spots. Has anyone tried this? Even with doing this and the other items above, I will still have leftovers which I could simply leave as compost for future use.
Composting toilet?

Hard wood chips are supposedly the best for mulch. Too much wood chips in the short term sucks away nutrients in the soil until they break down and worms can process them.

2 cents

Ben
 
When we had outdoor hunting dogs, we would use cedar chips and sawdust for dog bedding. It smelled nice, provided some heat and softness for the pups and apparently bugs don't really like cedar, which was a plus. On top of the wood chips and sawdust, we'd use the straw. We would also use the wood chips out in their elimination area so that it wouldn't get to muddy or smelly out there and it helped to keep the weeds down.
 
When we had outdoor hunting dogs, we would use cedar chips and sawdust for dog bedding. It smelled nice, provided some heat and softness for the pups and apparently bugs don't really like cedar, which was a plus. On top of the wood chips and sawdust, we'd use the straw. We would also use the wood chips out in their elimination area so that it wouldn't get to muddy or smelly out there and it helped to keep the weeds down.
I like cedar chips, but willows and alders it is. I'm dovetailing on angie_nrs.

I used to have a lot of earwigs around my property. Someone told me to use cedar mulch. I have and the earwigs have greatly decreased.
I was wondering if cedar chips would help decrease ticks, if you have them?

I would think that if you have particularly weedy areas, spreading mulch there might help reduce the weeds. If you really have lots of wood chips and are wondering where to put them, maybe use them to start some roads in places on your place where it might be nice to have better access.

Neither of these woods work well for firewood?
 
cedar works great for starting fires but pops a lot! I have piled up wood chips that are 5-6 years old, scrape the top layer of chips off and it is the richest looking soil to be found on my property! I use that to fill my raised beds every spring
 
cedar works great for starting fires but pops a lot! I have piled up wood chips that are 5-6 years old, scrape the top layer of chips off and it is the richest looking soil to be found on my property! I use that to fill my raised beds every spring
After scraping the top level of chips on the ground are you into worms?

Ben
 
Composting toilet?

Hard wood chips are supposedly the best for mulch. Too much wood chips in the short term sucks away nutrients in the soil until they break down and worms can process them.

2 cents

Ben

What I have read is that you need to compost wood chips for at least a year before adding to garden soil or the wood chips will actually drain nutrient from the soil.
 
Use the limbs and chips to start Hügelkultur mounds. Turn the chips into charcoal and use in your garden and orchard.

For soft spots in your road, put in punching. This is best done during construction. Lay limbed trees, the width of the desired roadway, side by side, the entire length of the soft area and cover with gravel and rock.

Our driveway is 400 yards long, sixty years old, and built this way.
 
Lot of roads built using logs, corduroy roads. I think the chips would help bind it up and would put the whole stick in.
If you put some cardboard down on the paths in your garden n cover with the chips it looks nice keeps weeds down. Soft on the feet too
 
Lot of roads built using logs, corduroy roads. I think the chips would help bind it up and would put the whole stick in.
If you put some cardboard down on the paths in your garden n cover with the chips it looks nice keeps weeds down. Soft on the feet too

The wife already has the cardboard cut and the first load will be used exactly for the paths along the beds!
 
Wood chips may also contain mushroom spores and if you know your mushrooms, you could have an edible landscape.


I don't know alot about wild mushrooms, which is a bad thing living in the NW where we have tons of them, safe edible, poisonous and 'magic'. When I find any in my yard I usually ignore them or step & smash them. I've found about a dozen different types...atleast from the looks of them. But this spring I noticed a new one and checked online for pictures and poisonous look alikes and how to tell the differences.........I now have a few Morels, or did have. I still won't eat them, just because mushrooms are one of those things my brain can't get past as a safe forageable food.



Other suggestions for use of wood chips........this winter when things get icy & slick, use it for traction........I did this in my freezer shed that has an open doorway with a concrete floor that can get wet & slick so I put down some chips so I didnt slip & fall going out there
 
I will be using my wood chipper heavily this summer and I will be producing a massive amounts of wood chips. This will be willows and alders from this summers project of extending my wildfire protective standoff. I want to best utilize this byproduct.
What other uses would you suggest?
I have a couple soft spots in my half mile long private dirt/rocky driveway. There are two locations where I am thinking of dumping a pick up load and mixing in dirt to help firm up the soft spots. Has anyone tried this? Even with doing this and the other items above, I will still have leftovers which I could simply leave as compost for future use.
The hardwood chips could be used in a bed for winecap mushrooms, when the chips are low, just add more & you can plant spring crops like tomatoes in the bed. Wine cap will compost the chips & the plants will shade the mushrooms.
 
Around here, you used to able to get "hog fuel". used for dog runs, horse paths, garden paths, mulch if you weren't picky, It got almost as expensive as mulch :(
Hog fuel is bought by companies with boilers to burn as a "carbon neutral" fuel so it got expensive!
 
Hog fuel is bought by companies with boilers to burn as a "carbon neutral" fuel so it got expensive!
For those that don't know, hog fuel is the parts of the tree that a sawmill can't regularly sell. It consists of sawdust, bark and small chips. Sawmills wind up with huge hog fuel piles. They are prone to spontaneous combustion. Some hog fuel fires but for decades, due to the fact that they are near impossible to extinguish and there is no advantage to the sawmill putting it out as the hog fuel id being destroyed.
 
I can get evergreen wood chips, but not hard wood chips.
 

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