What do you do with woodchips

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Sbercik

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Jan 22, 2021
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Do you take you work home with you? Do you leave your woodchips or pay to dump them? I know about chip drop...Just starting out here in Washington. I have been taking the chips home and dumping them in various locations around my property to fill in low spots, make garden paths, stuff like that. I am considering spreading them out all over my land to make it more flat and to level the terrain but don't know what that will look like in the long term. So far I have thrown logs some logs in holes and dumped chips on top to make a spot by my driveway a little more level. Seems pretty solid for now, but I know it's obvi settle and crumble in a couple years time. Dirt and Rock dont rot, so I feel like I should start filling in holes with real fill. But what to do with all my wood chips is still an answer I am searching for.
 
beware of burying logs and wood chips, they reduce nitrogen in the soil for surrounding plants. People around here beg for free delivered wood chips, quite a few will even pick them up if their loaded for them including lawn guys or even the county wants them for trails and parks. I mix them and pine bark with lawn clippings to make a large pile of compost to let it sit a year then used as potting or flowerbed soil. It beaks down much faster this way and can be accelerated if stirred/tilled with active compost it will be fully broken down in a year and can be sold as top grade garden soil if you add some other things in like manures. It costs 50 bucks a yard around here at the garden centers
 
I dump them at the closest spot available. 90% of my work is rural, and finding a spot to tip for free is simple. I'd like to start making my own mulch / compost with them and make it a profit item eventually.
 
I'm rural too. People call us begging for wood chips. Much of the time we chip straight into the woods.

Otherwise I pay 300 per year to dump at the town green waste dump. I can even dump massive chunks of pine/spruce/nasty wood there. When I lived in Los Angeles we spent many thousands per year at the dump. Funny thing is our prices aren't all that different now.

There is a very reputable outfit in a suburban area an hour south of me that owns a tub grinder and saw mill to sell product. I think they basically break even financially but the convenience of it all is well worthwhile. The guy built most of the non-structural components of his house from it.

All that said, if you live in a more populated area it gets more complicated. I know of a company in san diego who had a full time employee to basically coordinate local chip deliveries. That was before the "chip drop" app.
 
I dump them at the closest spot available. 90% of my work is rural, and finding a spot to tip for free is simple. I'd like to start making my own mulch / compost with them and make it a profit item eventually.
keep a eye out for horse farms or egg sellers giving manure away, asking the egg sellers usually will get you plenty for free or eggs in payment. first start by making a small compost pile mixing grass clippings, leaves and household organic trash. The first pile will take up to a year to get good and broken down, this is your ticket to making a huge pile break down into composted soil as fast as possible. Next to make the huge pile...you will want to layer the pile like building a sandwich. First layer of leaves then a layer of wood chips then leaves then manure then leaves etc etc you get the point...now the trick is to shovel in your pre made compost into each layer as you go. The compost you pre made is slam full of the bacteria and micro organisms that took a year to grow and break down the original pile, this will very rapidly compost your fresh pile in half the time or less. Oh and water each layer of the pile thoroughly as you go..that sucker will get cooking hot after a couple days.
 
I live in an area with rural and urban markets. I can't tell you how many loads of chips or logs we've generated over the last 30 years or so but....we've never paid to get rid of chips or logs.....ever. We have plenty of people who want anything we can give them.
 
My area is terrible for getting rid of anything. I had to buy land and dump on it.


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I have been dumping my wood chips around my property for almost twenty years. As a result no weeds and low spots have been eliminated but still need to even out areas with a rake. Small bark and chips start to decompose in about two years. What ever is left over goes on the roads to my harvest sites. Thanks
 
Yes, try to find the rural places, or suburban outside city limits, especially part-time farmer-wannabes.
I have one friend who burns whatever I bring him. He needs the firewood, so I cut my wood for him into 4' lengths if <10"⌀; if over >10"⌀, I cut into 20" lengths for his wood splitter. That supplies his outdoor wood stove boiler. All the brush he burns into ash for his gardening.

He's grateful for the firewood and accepts any other cuttings I bring him. He unloads for me, since I'm old and tired, and he burns brush, vines, honeysuckle, even trunks with metal. It's a great mutual relationship. And I drive past his place once or twice a week for personal reasons regardless. Some weeks I make extra trips if my trucks and trailers fill up.

That's a special relationship. Looks like many others have found sufficient places to drop at strangers' homes. That's great.

He would prefer wood chips over ashes, because he would use wood chips under chickens 'cuz the crap-soaked wood makes good compost for gardening.

I get to the point of justifying a wood chipper and dumping solution (even rentals), then I may shift to bringing him more chips and less brush.
 
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