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.

I'd be more worried about the source of the tree and why it's being cut down. Info from the Royal Horticultural Society: Can mulches made from diseased wood cause infection in healthy plants? Studies indicate that wood and bark chip mulch made from diseased trees is unlikely to transmit pathogens to the roots of healthy trees, growing under good soil conditions. It is important that such mulches are not worked into the soil, as this will increase the risk. The RHS do, however, recommend that basal parts of trees infected with honey fungus, Phytophthora root rot, or parts of trees infected with stem diseases such as verticillium wilt or coral spot, are not used, to reduce the risk to plants.

If you are chipping up very small branches they might work o.k. in a compost pile. I do happen to like wood chips as mulch more than as a compost ingredient although my very old wood chip piles look a lot like compost at this point and volunteer plants do sprout in those piles. One thing to consider is how much time you want to surrender to improving soil and with what methods. Compost and manure would probably get you there quicker than with decaying wood. The areas where I have had wood rotting for years have very rich soil but it took a while to get that way. Of course, it also matters what you are growing and where in the world you are growing it. For instance, a high production vegetable garden has different needs than a perennial flower garden. I am also attaching a link to an article about using ramial chipped wood for soil improvement. Here is a link that might be useful: Ramial Chipped Wood Article

Some of the trees were starting to lean so I went and checked on them. I stepped where the trees were planted and the soil compacted an inch or two down. I thought I understood how to plant these trees but I guess I didn't. Please advise what you would do. Should I take this as a loss and replant? I'm prepared to to remove the amended soil and switch it out with native soil. I'll just dig where the pine needles are and switch the soil out. After reading the guide that Ken posted, I completely did the opposite of what I was supposed to. I dug the hole way to deep (2 to 3 inches deeper than the root ball), amended the soil, and didn't pack the soil down. So here is my plan. Dig up one plant at a time. Remove the amended soil and replace it with native soil. Firmly pack down the the native soil so that the top of the root ball is slightly above ground level. Fill in and pack down more native soil around the plant making sure not to cover the root ball. Move the amended soil to the hole where I retrieved the native soil. or Pack the holes and add more native soil.