Hey guys I was wondering what your opinions are on using soil with a ton of wood chips and sticks in it? I bought a few bags of black gold organic potting soil from wal mart and its basically mulch. I am only using it to supplement my FFOF and save a little money because I'm using a lot of soil this year. The mix will be about 50% FFOF 30% perlite and 20% black gold. I've tried doing a little research and some people say to never use woody soil and other people say it can actually be beneficial. I am growing outdoors in New England in large fabric pots if that makes any difference. I know cheaping out is never the best way to go I just want to know if it will be safe to use or if it could potentially ruin my grow. Thanks a lot.
Great question. But first, are you growing organically or with some dry amendments or liquid nutrients? Ideally, another question to ask along with the above question is do you want a live soil? If you are growing organically then most definitely use wood chips. You ideally want a 20:1 (Carbon:Nitrogen) ratio. The bacteria and organisms in your soil need the carbon in order to eat away at the compost and turn it into plant available ready forms. However if you are growing organic, I most certainly hope you already knew that. Too much and too little Carbon or Nitrogen will disrupt and slow the bacteria, leading to slower feed for plants. You ideally want to land somewhere in the 20:1 ratio. If you are not not growing organically, sure you can still use it, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It can help with water retention if used as a mulch along with preventing weed growth (the bad types of weed ) and can even improve some characteristics of soil such as controlling soil temperature and preventing erosion. The only downside i see to using wood chips is the type of wood chips you use. Some types of wood can provide acidity so be aware of that. Also make sure it is pesticide, insecticide, fungicide or any chemical free for that matter, ESPECIALLY if you’re growing organic. Hope this helped. Let me know if you have any other questions. Grow on
Thanks a lot for the response. I plan to use some kind of organic nutrients, last year I had good results with fox farm but I know there are better nutrients out there for less money that are fully organic. Would you suggest putting the woody soil on top of the FFOF or mixing them together?
A couple weeks ago I was looking for information on what I could do with sawdust I had in a bucket, because my first thought was throw it in the compost bin. I came across an article that explained how wood uses a lot of nitrogen to break down. Went on to say it can even leach it from your plants. If the wood is pretty much broken down, I assume I would be fine. Hard thick pieces I'd scoop out to be safe.
Here is a sample of the soil. Looks to me like the sticks have been composting for a long time. They are all soft and black.
Hold on a second. If that is the size of wood chip and sticks you are talking about then there is no sense in using them. I supposed you could use it for the sake, but for a stick of thats size to decompose would take 5 years or more. You would ideally want small chips and sticks