Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["J Bailey" <jbmail@isomedia.com>]

We just like the way cedar chips make the chicken coops smell, and hopefully help with bugs, that we decided to keep using them there. There is so much other compostable material now (goat/cow poop, mucky straw, and veggie matter in season) that I'm going to try mixing in the cedar/chicken poo and see how it goes. I'm hoping the cow poo will help heat things up enough to overcome the slower cooking cedar chips. Maybe by next fall, when I put the garden to bed, it will be ready to mix in to the soil.

 

--Joanna

 

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Paul,  I'm using the wood chips to build soil, block weeds, and generally improve the look of of my flower beds.   We're mainly putting them 4" thick in all the paths and to cover bare ground lightly till it's time to plant in the spring.
  
  We have a bare ground problem in my back yard due to heavy foot and animal traffic and years ago I was told that if I heavily mulched it, and sprinkled ground cover seeds, that I might be able to get a green covering growing there again.   We found a picture that proves there USED to be a grass covering.  After we had to gut and remodel our house and used that area as the trash pile, we've had difficulty getting anything to grow there.   The thought has occurred to me to just buy some sod and lay it down, but it was fleeting.
  
  I put quite a few wood chips down and have some flower bulbs that I'm attempting to grow in containers and so we'll see how it does this year.
  
  My garden certainly looks prettier and neater now with those long mulched sections and just garlic and walking onions sticking up in their beds.
  
  Blessings,
  Carrie