Seems to me that wood should be one of the sources of organic matter that is applied to soil. Wood is partly made of long-lasting organic molecules (lignins) that serve as food for mycorrhizal fungi. I add wood chips to my compost piles when I can, and I almost always can. How well wood chips works as a mulch and soil amendment depends upon a lot of factors. What kinds of trees were the source of the chips? How small are the chips? How much leaf and small twig is in the waste? How fresh are the chips? What is the climate where they will be used? Does the soil beneath the wood chips have lots of organic matter in it already, and what kind of OM is in the soil (decomposed wood, fresh compost, aged compost?) From what I read here, it seems like wood chips work well in hot, humid environments, almost regardless of other factors. They also seem to work well when their use is ongoing, where there has been wood mulch in place for years. Fresh, small wood chips that contains lots of twigs and fresh leaves composts very hot and seems like an ideal mulch to suppress weeds. Just like compost piles, fresh chips benefit from being in a pile where the vapors, both water and ammonia, can be reabsorbed by the pile. I'd even suggest covering the pile while it is at its hottest. Covering the pile will slow the loss of water and ammonia and speed its decomposition. I'm thinking of a four-layer method of creating new garden beds. Starting in the fall, on the bare soil, apply some of the humic shale ore like Zamzow's Huma Green. Maybe scratch it into the very top of the soil. Then lay on four inches of finished compost. Then several inches of unfinished compost, and finally a mulch of wood chips that have had a chance to decompose for a bit. I think there would be a good interaction between the unfinished compost and the wood chips. By spring the finished compost will be integrated with the topsoil, and the layers above might be a perfect mulch. Dig through it to plant your plants, perhaps keeping it away from the plant stems until the plants are established and the weather warms up. The wood chips will protect the layers underneath and eventually become part of the compost.

I prefer shredded hardwood mulch for flower beds. It has a nice uniform appearance and will break down and enrich the soil. As it breaks down, no need to rake up the remains-- just plan to add a new layer (usually in the fall). :Pinebark mulch is great for acid-loving shrubs like gardenias and azaleas but it's typically more expensive. If your old mulch cakes up and forms a crust, you can break it up with a rake or hoe and turn it into the soil. This happens with some mulches and also if the original mulch is laid a little too thick. Wood chip is not as good for suppressing weeds but I like it fine for tree rings and shrub borders. In the arboretum where I volunteer we use lots of both, just for different purposes. In our demonstration vegetable garden we mulch with grass clipping and straw with a layer of newspaper underneath!

Just three years ago, where my house and yard is now was just a field of weeds. On my half acre lot, I've mulched with between 500 and 600 bags of leaves from neighbors, ground up, and applied thickly to growing beds, spread regularly and thinly on the lawn. In some of the areas where I wasn't going to pay much attention to for a few years, I put down a thick layer of newspaper before piling on the leaf mulch. In areas where I am actively gardening, I just pile on the leaves each fall and winter(already started collecting leaves this year). I already have absolutely no weed "problem" in my garden areas. Yes, the mulch keeps down almost all of the weeds. Also, some weeds sprout and come through the mulch. The advantage of the mulch is that the soil underneath never is hard, dry, and impossible to remove weeds from. I walked through my garden often that first year in particular, to remove weeds when small and well BEFORE they can ever go to seed. Anything that can grow from any small piece of the subject weed or that included seeds(along borders, etc., I put in a trash can for removal from my property. More benign things go in the compost pile. But they are very easy to pull from well mulched soil, and there just aren't many of them. The casual way I deal with weeding is an indication that just the organic mulch is all I need. I have seen, heard, and experienced horrible things with landscape fabric, and I won't subject myself to that.

Hi everyone, I planted a bunch of strawberries earlier this year and had put down a fair amount of wood mulch on top of them. However, the weeds are getting more and more aggressive (nutgrass, etc.) and it's taking a lot of time to keep up with the weeds. I'm thinking about putting black plastic over the strawberries and mulch to get a better control over the weeds. Is there any danger to the strawberry plants of having the wood mulch under the black plastic? Can I cut the runners off the strawberry plants or should I leave those alone and try to save as many as possible when putting the black plastic over the plants? Thanks.