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What Is Wood Chip Gardening?

Learn what wood chips are the best mulch for a garden.

Wood chip gardening is the practice of covering your vegetable garden and fruit orchard with wood chip mulch. Wood chips will improve your soil and regenerate the natural life in the soil instead of the use of toxic chemicals that deplete the soil and create soil loss. Back to Eden Gardening uses wood chips that are 90% needles, leaves, and branches that have been chipped from tree trimming waste. It is important to understand that the leaves are a source of nitrogen and the branches are a source of carbon. This ratio creates an ideal mulch gardening material when the wood chips have composted. Paul Gautschi has multiple gardens and orchards in which he utilizes both raw, composted, and screened wood chips. 
Wood Chip Gardening
Fresh Wood Chips
Fresh Wood Chips
​Fresh wood chips are freshly chipped tree trimmings that have not had time to break down into composted wood chips. If you contact a local tree trimming company, you will get a delivery of fresh wood chips. We recommend using the Chip Drop App to get a FREE delivery of fresh wood chips.
Wood Chip Gardening
Composted Wood Chips
Composted Wood Chips
Composted wood chips are chipped tree trimmings that have had time to break down and have composted for 3+ months. This is what you will create from letting your raw wood chips sit and break down for 3+ months.  
Wood Chip Gardening
Composted and Screened Wood Chips
Screened Wood Chips
Screened wood chips are composted wood chips that have been screened with a garden sieve. This is an ideal mulch for planting seeds in your garden.
Recommended Wood Chip Delivery App
Sign up for FREE to get a FREE wood chip delivery! 
What Wood Chips NOT To Use in a Garden
Paul Gautschi and Back to Eden Film do not recommend using the following wood chips:
  1. Bark Nuggets: Bard Nuggets do NOT have the carbon to nitrogen ratio that creates a good gardening mulch.
  2. Sawdust: Sawdust is only recommended when mixed in with manure, which is typically then composted.
  3. Processed Wood Chips: Do not use dyed or chemically treated mulch. This is sold as a decorative landscaping mulch. It will not be what you receive from tree trimming service drop off. When in doubt, always ask the supplier.
  4. Black Walnut and Eucalyptus: Eucalyptus is the only tree that Paul does not recommend using the wood chips from based on his personal experience. Black Walnut trees also are not recommended. 
  5. Poison Oak/Poison Ivy: If you are concerned about what might be in your wood chip delivery, ask the tree trimming service company any questions you have! 
Wood Chip Gardening
Fresh Wood Chips from a Local Tree Service Company
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