Any thoughts?

I use pine needles and decomposed bark as mulch and as a brown in my compost pile. I have used it as a vegetable garden mulch to warm the soils in my cool coastal climate. Start composting now and improve your soil over time. Hope this helps.

The layer on top of forest soil is basically nature's compost pile. If you don't need it where it is - not sure what you're doing with *that* space - it should be great in the garden.

With the chipped stuff as mulch, I seem to remember pine can be a bit acidic, only at first because everything decomposes toward neutral. If it's already aged a year you might not even have that problem.

Finally, I can't see your needle litter layer to know just how far it's composted down, just keep an eye on your garden with respect to nitrogen. If the needle litter is drawing N from the soil because it wasn't broken down enough, your plants could look a little anemic, but this may not happen at all.

All in all, a good situation I think. Good luck!

Thanks guys, I'll try to post a photo today sometime.

Ted

Here's a photo of what I have to work with.

Ted

Here is a link that might be useful: Pine Humus

Can you view the photo? Does this look like usable stuff or is it not broken down enough?

As I understand it, that sort of organic material is broken down by fungi, not bacteria. The end result is more acidic.

Answering your original question, yes, you can mix that with your sandy soil, but I would also add some type of compost or manure to provide some more bacterial materials. I would be careful about how deep you bury that kind of material.

I would be happy to have OM like that for my raspberry and blueberry plants.

Wood chips can be used, but you'll want to compost them before using them. I have found that freshly chipped ramial material heats up very hot as if it contains a lot of sources of 'green' material. But it cools off just as quickly. When I mixed chipped ramial material into the compost, that compost broke down quickly, more quickly and more completely than the leaf/grass compost in the next bin over.

I have learned not to use unfinished compost in my soil, especially before planting. I will probably use the wood-chip compost as a mulch after the plants become established.

Thanks Idaho Gardener. I'm planning on using this for my blueberries and raspberries as well.

I have all the pine wood chips (aged for at least 5 years so far) I can get. Just have to move it from the site which is about 2 miles away.

Now I just need a dump truck to haul it home!

Mixing what I see in the picture into soil would not be a good idea since your soil bacteria would be more interested in digesting that then in feeding your plants. However that material can be used as mulch and over time the soil bacteria will digest that material and mix it into your soil and do that much better then you can.
It always amazes me that people will tell you that you need to do things to the materials Ma Nature supplies us with to make our soil better that Ma Nature does not do. Walk in the woods and look at what Ma Nature does out there, the plants that grow just feeding on vegetative waste that falls on the ground and sometimes gets mixed with a bit of animal manure that the soil bacteria and fungi digest, eventually, and work into the forest soil. If you replicate that you can, too, get good soil.

Kim,

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Excuse my uneducated stance, but I do want to learn more!

My plants in this sandy section did horrible last year, but I added almost nothing to ammend the soil. I was thinking of bringing in a truck load of composted manure, would you be of the opinion that this is not a good plan?

What else could do with soil that is so poor to begin with?

Ted

First you need to find out more about your soil, so you need to talk with the people at your county office of your state university Cooperative Extension Service about having a good reliable soil test done so you know your soils pH nad why it is what it is as well as what soil nutrients are there. Then you can dig in with these simple soil tests,
1) Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top.

2. Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.
Which will tell you what your soil now has and guide you in making amends to work toward building that soil into a good, healthy soil that will grow strong and healthy plants.

You are describing my mother's soil in southern Maine---all sand and pine trees. The pine needle duff you've shown is quite broken down and would be an excellent addition to your sand---as will almost anything else you can get your hands on. Sand is the hardest soil to amend. If I were going to use not wholly decomposed wood chips, I would only use them as an upper mulch and maybe fertilize with blood or cottonseed meal. The sand soil in my mother's yard is what got me using ultra deep, nourishing mulches---seaweed, hay, compost.

Annpat, did you not chastise me for considering using duff in my compost and garden? It was something about disrupting the plant life tha depends on the forest floor. :)

@Kim
Great info. I will do what you suggest ASAP. I say my soil is sandy, but in reality it is probably more silty. I'll find out for sure.

@Annpat
I hope the wood chips will work great as a mulch. I love that it is free and easy to get. Interesting idea to use seaweed as mulch. I'm curious how you can use hay as mulch. I did that once and ended up with a wheat field instead of a vegetable garden!

@Mendopete
I'd stated that I'm getting the humus from an area where the trees have been removed to allow for construction of my home, hence no damage to the forest.

I would have mentioned it, Mendopete, had it not been a done deal because of the construction. There really are a lot of plants that depend on that duff besides lady's slippers and May Flowers. But I wouldn't yell at you and not yell at him, dear.

Yes, if you use hay, you need to commit to mulching forever. I'm not really a big fan of wood chips as a mulch, since there are other mulches that break down more quickly, hence feeding the plot more quickly.

Fresh pine needles are definitely decomposed by a fungus, not bacteria. I just posted about the huge pile of chipped Spruce in my yard after a hurricane uprooted it two weeks ago: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg011408489744.html

Hay is for horses! STRAW is for mulch! There IS a difference. Straw is the remaining stalk after grains are harvested, whereas hay is dried grass / cereal with seeds remaining. You can use saltwater marsh hay (unless your garden is on the ocean) because the seeds from it require salty sea air and sandy soil to germinate. Do NOT harvest this yourself though (you can buy it), as it can only be harvested AFTER the local nesting birds have flown South for the winter and before they return to nest in spring. Also you must leave the seed heads behind to create more salt marsh hay and cut stalks at least one foot above the ground because the stalks are what prevent beach erosion and it also spreads via rhizomes. If you do live near the ocean it is much easier (and better for the environment) to just collect the dried up seaweed that washes up on shore (it is already dead, and many towns stupidly spend millions "cleaning" the beaches of it because the people find it ugly).

My parents mulched potatoes with hay instead of straw one year. We didn't get many potatoes, but we had a beautiful wheat field!

I'm a long ways from the ocean, so I think I'll keep working on ways to effectively use the pine materials I have locally available. I've opened another post regarding the soil test Kim recomended above.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg0314182414207.html

Thanks,

Ted

Hay is a perfectly respectable mulch, as Ruth Stout might tell you were she alive. It needs to be deep and it needs to be reapplied annually.

Annpat. How thick would the hay need to be? I've even had trouble with straw providing too much seed, but I can see how putting it on real thick would work. Does it get tilled in for the next year or pulled aside to replant?

Ted

I used to till it in, Ted, but this property is too rocky for tilling, so I pull it aside. I usually use hay as a decorative topping for my newspaper mulch, and when applied that way, it doesn't need to be any thicker than necessary to hide the newspaper. When I apply it without newspaper, I use "books" of hay, which are compressed and more impenetrable than fluffy hay is. I'm guessing they're about 6-8 inches deep. When I plant seeds, I usually plant, let the seeds come up a little, then apply the hay. With seeds, though, I almost always use the newspaper/hay combination.

From my perspective, there is nothing more exciting than using a mulch that's going to break down quickly, and feed and amend my soil when it does. I mulch year round, as the materials are available.

People are correct, though; if you use hay one year, you're going to have to have a mulching plan for the next year as well. Hay is weedy; but mulchers aren't fazed by weeds, of course.

I like the farmy hay look in a vegetable garden, but I prefer the darkness of compost or leaf mold in a flower bed.