Do wood chips cause acid soil?

[meanwhile]

What type soil is created by rotten wood chips? We have an area, large area, of soil made by rotten wood chips, rotten paper, horse poop, and rotten hay. Would that make it acid?

[Cabin Fever]

Any decomposing organic material will produce organic acids. So, the answer to your question is "yes" the addition of those materials will tend to reduce soil pH.

[MELOC]

wood chips alone...maybe. your mix may be different as i have read in the gardening forum that horse manure will raise the ph.

[Callieslamb]

Wood chips in your soil will rob the soil of nitrogen while it is decomposing. As for acidic, wouldn't that depend mostly on the type of tree it is/was? some trees are more acidic that others.

[Paquebot]

Wood chips would be acidic. Paper and hay would be neutral. Horse manure would be alkaline. Sounds like a great mix, especially if the chips were indeed already rotten.

Martin

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

It does sound like a great mix , how does my 20 pounds of wood ash a week for 4 months a year figure into that mix what should i be adding to offset that

i am very bad with alkiline and acidic

is there a refrence scale somewere that tells what is alkiline and what is acidic and assigns then some numeric value so that i would know for instance that wood chips were a -1 while paper and hay were 0 and manuer was a +2 so that if i wanted to add these thing and figure a net increase or decrease or remain the same ph

[meanwhile]

Oh good! The whole mix is already rotten and all mixed up....actually it looks like just a really good dirt.......and so I planted some of my Grandmother's Camellias on it......yes I should have tested it first but I did not......and so that will work out great!

We get rotten wood chips from Tree Companies who need to dump them rather than pay a dump fee. Then we just let them rot in piles OR we top dress paths and let them rot in the path for a few years, then we shovel up the path into the gardens beds......and there we have it = good dirt with little work but LOTS of planning ahead.

Thank you -

Greencountrypete: yep, I could use a chart too.....I will see if I can find one......

[meanwhile]

This one was interesting but I did not see poop or paper on there:
http://www.ghorganics.com/page32.html

I found this article helpful in general about soil ph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_pH

Alkali soils:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_alkalinity

This is about Large Scale composting but look down and there is a chart:
http://www.p2pays.org/ref/02/01372.pdf

I cannot find a good chart. Maybe someone else has one. But – it was interesting trying to find one. Have good weekend.

[Jenn]

GCP careful! Wood ash is very alkaline. I recommend yu be very careful adding them to anything- only do so with a pH test which you can find at most garden/hardware stores.

[Beeman]

If you're dumping wood ashes over the winter I believe most of the alkalinity would leach away before planting time.

[Forerunner]

Wood ash will react with nitrogen, driving the latter off into the atmosphere where it does no good. Apply the wood ash separately from the compost. Never mix wood ash into the compost pile. As noted above, apply the wood ash only to areas of garden that will be used to grow plants that prefer it.

The idea of using wood chips for paths around the homestead is a good one.
My worms come up on warm, damp evenings and the fresh chips are in near constant motion as the little guys feed and crawl around in them.
It doesn't take as long as one might expect for those chips to break down into the finest black humus....
Some of my best ground now is where multiple tons of old sawdust was worked in several years ago. That ground is the blackest, richest, most drought resistant, easy to work, first to support early germination soil that I've seen.
It started out as clay and timber soil. It took a season and a half for the nitrogen balance to return after spreading well over a foot of the sawdust and working it in.
The sawdust was a midwest hardwood blend, for those who might need to know.

A distinction must be made between building soil for the long run, and growing a good crop in the short run. There is reason for concern if both are attempted on the same ground at the same time. With good compost and balanced material, both can be done in the short term. But if you really want to up your organic matter quickly for a spectacular result, say, two or three years down the road, you can pile on just about anything discussed here thus far, ripped or tilled in as deeply as possible.
I've found it best to rip in about 4-6 inches at a time, as many times as can be afforded. More than that and the equipment doesn't handle the mixing job as well. Pure sawdust, worked into, say, the hard clay that surrounds your current working garden, will turn the worst soil into rich, black loam in a couple years time.
A thick layer of sawdust or wood chips, old or new, is a great way to keep down weeds and extend the garden space at the same time. Nitrogen bearing material can be worked into that at any time, or not, depending on how quickly you need results.
Carbon draws nitrogen from every source, including the soil around it and the atmosphere. Rain and snow wash some nitrogen out of the sky and into the soil.
Think of carbon as the foundation to soil. It is the sponge that holds and makes available to plants the rest of the required nutrients. Such is why the commercial ag soils are all but dead in this country. The carbon base has been eliminated.

[meanwhile]

Forerunner - thank you for the good explanation about nitrogen. We are still learning about the soil here. About 7 - 8 years ago, we dumped truck load after truck load of wood chips on a hillside, some rotten and some fresh plus some pine needles....but we did not really know what we were doing. It also had paper in it and the horse manure. It is now the best soil we have here.

I love wood chips in the paths. We use as many wood chips as we can get the Tree Man to dump! Unfortunately for me, last summer I taught the wife of one Tree Man how to use the wood chips and so that source is almost gone! She did build a nice garden though, so the chips were put to good use.

Have a good week. It is cold and messy here today.

[haypoint]

wood ash will bring up ph. However, it is so very fine that it leaches away very easily. So, if you are dumping it on the garden all winterr log, you may be losing much of it. If possible, save the ashes and yse them as top dressing in the garden.

Decompoing wood chips sucks up the soil's nitrogen.
Lime works downward. Add lime over nitrogen and it'll go by-by. Add the nitrogen into well limed soil and it stays there. Fertilizer over lime, not lime over fertilizer. The book 5 acres and Independence explains this.

[meanwhile]

Hello and thanks everyone for the input about the wood chips. I have two dump trucks full arriving tomorrow. It will be fun to get them into compost piles, paths and gardens. Have good week

[ronbre]

if it is too acid toss in some wood ashes and char if you have a wood stove..or you can even put in some leftover scraps of drywall to sweeten the soil..or buy lime..

a lot of plants LOVE acid soil so if you want to plant them..then you don't have to do anything..like blueberries..!!

[meanwhile]

ronbre: hello - I just replied to you on my other thread too. Yes! Blueberries are a good idea for the acid soil and so are my Camellias. I have both of those in the lower Terraced Garden and that is where we have the more acid soil. I am going to just use the Dog Yard stuff in the Orchard since that is WAY up the hill.

Wonder in all drywall is ok to use? Or if some of it is bad? But...that is a topic for another thread......didn't mean to get myself off topic.

Thank you!

[farmerbrian]

We get rotten wood chips from Tree Companies who need to dump them rather than pay a dump fee.

Lucky you I've been trying to set something like this up myself for quite a while. I contacted all the tree companies I could find in my local area, no takers. Did you offer anything other than a free dumping ground?

[Paquebot]

I don't understand why people are so afraid of acidic soil. Every vegetable that I can think of prefers acidic over alkaline. Check out the optimum pH ranges at www.thegardenhelper.com/soilPH.htm and most fears will eased. You'll find that blueberries aren't the only things that love low pH numbers.

Martin

[meanwhile]

farmerbrian: We used to get the chips totally free but for the last two years, one Tree Man has asked me to pay his gas which is reasonable since we are way way out in the bushes. I usually pay him $65.00 and get a dump truck full. I pay that much to him since on days when he is closer to my place, he does drop them off totally free. Today I will get two loads from him and will have to pay the $65.00 each but about six months ago, he dropped off one load for no fee. So - it balances out.

The 2nd source we have right now only charges me $40.00 per load and that is worth it too. Last week he dumped off a huge load that was very rotten - almost black in sections it was so rotten.

I have also tried to get other Tree companies to dump chips but you are right, it is hard to find someone to do it. Both of these that are selling/giving me chips right now are companies I have paid for other work. Thus, I think they consider me a "customer" and want to keep me as a paying customer. For example, one of the men had some Locust Logs he wanted to get rid of and so I paid him $40. each for 6 logs that were all 14 to 18 feet and very thick. I can use them for support posts on my new pole building.

Paquebot: I am not afraid of the acid soil, I will just trying to figure out what makes it and what does not. Plus, it is just a good discussion and I learn things when I ask more questions. The discussion about the ph and the acid and alkaline was really interesting and I learned something. Thank you for the chart too. It is a good one.

Thanks everyone. Have a good week.

[Bearfootfarm]

Gypsum (dry wall) isnt all that good for raising PH in all soils, although it does add lots of calcium

http://www.extension.umn.edu/cropEne...2/02MNCN07.htm

A Liming Material?

There has been some suggestion that the application of gypsum will raise the pH of acid soils. Although gypsum, like lime, contains calcium, the calcium is not responsible for an increase in pH where soils are limed. It is true that the use of gypsum increases pH when applied to acid soils in the southwestern United States. That increase is due to complex reactions with soluble aluminum. Soluble aluminum is certainly not a concern in Minnesota soils. Therefore, we can't justify the application of gypsum as a liming material.