Thank you everyone for posting. tracydr thank you for asking; most of my tomatoes are 3-4' tall with the exceptions of a couple plants I purchased. The bush beans are about half sprouted. I'm not to worried though because a few more pop up every day. The pole beans on the other hand are doing much better. I soaked the pole beans for 24hrs before planting. I did not soak the bush beans at all. I planted the pole beans more than a week after planting the bush beans and they have all germinated. For now on I will soak all of my beans before planting. glib Thank you for posting. I know we don't always agree but I do respect your opinion and breadth of knowledge and your post was very helpful in my decision making process. Dave I did a search in the Soil, Compost & Mulch forum before starting this thread. Most of what I read was about composting wood chips rather than using them fresh as mulch though I do plan on doing both. You are one of my favorite posters though like glib I don't always agree with you I often find your posts informative and helpful. If you knew my whole situation I think you would have given a different response. I do not till. I use a 38lb Bosch chipping gun with a spade/clay bit and double dig my beds to 18". The norm for us is to have 100+ degrees temps every day four months a year or longer. The primary need for this mulch is to keep the soil cool. Without it nothing will survive our summer heat. I'm on a fixed income and cannot afford to buy composted mulch. This is the first year I will be composting my own. I have a drip irrigation system that allows me to add fertilizer/Nitrogen to the water. The drip lines will be under the mulch so most of the mulch will not be getting wet. Our yard is professionally sprayed for anything that creeps or crawls every two months or sooner if needed. I am not an organic gardener and will be spraying my plants with Triazicide and Daconil as needed. In eleven years living in Arizona I have not seen a single slug. We had snails for three days after our lawn was installed eight plus years ago. We have not seen one since and the pest control guy who sprays our yard said he has never seen either a slug or snail in Arizona. On your advice I will keep the mulch from making contact with the plant stems as best I can and hope for the best. Thank you for posting.

The term "aging" is pretty vague. Letting chips simply get old really does nothing to improve them. You pretty much have the same carbon mass as when they were new, albeit with less moisture in the cells. To properly "age" them so the carbon does not "rob nitrogen" (another poorly defined term in my opinion) you have let them completely rot to compost. My thirty years experience with chips is that I've always used truckloads of them every year, almost always green and fresh from the tree. Used as mulch, you have nothing to worry about as far as tying up nitrogen in your soil is concerned. They are never too fresh to immediately use as mulch. Waiting for them to lose moisture and turn gray will do nothing to improve them so start getting some use of them now. A new woodchip is as ready to use as an old one. And they make your garden look and smell fresh. Wayne

I have acquired wood chips from tree work that was done in my yard, as well as asking the tree trimmers in the towns I've lived in to dump loads in the yard for free (which they have always been willing to do). You can use them right away, but I like to let the piles sit for 6 months - 2 years, to let them decompose a bit and darken up. Like esker, I prefer the chips to be a bit darker than when they are freshly chipped. There is no need for the chips to dry out, in fact they will get nice and wet and heat up pretty well in a pile. My most recent pile, leftover from tree work done in November 07, was steaming for a few months last winter. Despite that, wood chips decompose very slowly and can sit in a pile for years and still be usable.

Can I use it to kill the grass where I want to put in new beds in a few months? If anybody is in the Ashford Park area and wants some, email me at eamoody@emory.edu . OMG- I have so many wood chips in my front yard! What have I gotten myself into?