ijon said:Anyone used wood mulch in their gardens?
Yes. The first time I filled in some raised boxes with free wood chips. I didn't have much $ at the time to buy dirt, and the wood chips were free. Eventually they broke down, and the entire bed sank about a foot, and I ended up with a ton of work re-structuring my entire garden bed and adding dirt. A TON of work. I see people suggesting back-filling with wood, twigs, and wood chips and such, and I cringe, because I know what is going to eventually happen. My ratio was about 1 foot of wood chips, to 2 feet of dirt.
If you are planning to use the wood chips as mulch, you have to be very careful what kind of trees the chips come from. Black walnut has a chemical in it that tends to inhibit the growth of many plants, as does oak. In fact, I bought and planted 2 viburnums and 2 paw paw trees, and mulched them with oak wood chips. Both viburnums are dead, and the paw paws are doing fine. We use wood chips in our woods where we don't want anything to grow, for the walk-ways, and around some of our trees. We learned the hard way not to use them around our other plants.
