gardening - from sawdust and curlies

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Central (upstate) NY
I didn't want to totally hijack the other thread.

If you're serious about your garden, you shouldn't put uncomposted shavings on unless you're also adding a nitrogen supplement, such as manure of some sort. Uncomposted wood shavings will absolutely starve your plants if nitrogen. Trust me on this. Also, it would be a good idea to test the pH of the soil regularly afterwards, as they can really acidify the soil as well. I have a pretty substantial compost pile, and a VERY substantial pile of shavings from turning. I'm actually starting to look into giving it to a place locally that does commercial compost sales; they use bruch chippings, leaves, and composted chicken & horse manure and call it "paydirt". All I can say is that the stuff does work. Anyway, I have about a pickuptruck load of shavings right now that I'm trying to get rid of! Anybody want some?

We are using some bagged topsoil mix that has peat moss, fertilizers and composted cow manure in it.

This is our first attempt at gardening, and we're kinda just seeing how things work. We started back in mid-April by laying down half plastic and half garden fabric to kill the grass. The plastic killed the grass, the garden fabric just puffed up with big tall grass. So we just moved the plastic to the other half of the plot after putting our soil down.

To put the soil down, we first mowed the dying grass and placed newspaper on top of it, then put down our soil. On top of the soil we put the garden fabric. While we were letting the grass die, we had gotten a few of those peat moss pellet germinators and started some things. We "transplanted" the lettuce and beans a couple weeks ago. The lettuce seems to be doing ok, but we're gonna need to buy more beans.

This weekend we're thinking to put down the soil on the other half the garden plot and I was thinking to throw in some wood chips and charcoal ash under the soil. Is this a bad idea? Would it be better to start a compost pile with this stuff for use in the fall soil prep instead?
 
Mark,

I would not put wood chips into the soil for gardening. They take too long to "Un-Compose"...:eek: :rofl: Seriously, you can use them, on top of the ground, around growing plants for weed control, but not for compost.
 
Mark,

I'd recommend composting any sawdust/shavings first before including them your garden.

As has been said already, no black walnut or anything really exotic.

I make sure to compost mine with a healthy mix of browns and greens.

The wood dust/shavings are the brown, grass and leafy trimmings are the greens.

We are kind of composting nuts. It's just so easy to do and good for the garden. It's really as easy as mixing brown and green and putting in a pile on the ground. Wet it down and watch it go. It should heat up real good at first, and eventually it will become dirt. If your patient enough, at some point the worms will get in it and then you know it's good to go...
 
Funny, but I think a lot of woodworkers also have gardens.

I've seen this question come up quite a lot.

We didn't have a garden last year and I really missed it.

I'm putting in some raised beds this year and just got 5 yards of 'triple mix' (Some kind of super duper organic material blend from the landscaping supplier) delivered yesterday.

Oh, and I also got 8 yards of sand to put under the above ground pool we are going to install.

I think I'm going to be doing a lot of shoveling this weekend....
 
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