stump of a huge pin oak

>------------------------------
>
>Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 07:28:29 -0700 (PDT)
>From: jeanne latta <jplatta@yahoo.com>
>Subject: mulch
>
>Hi everyone,
>   My next door neighbor had the stump of a huge pin oak tree ground
>out and is left with an immense pile of ground up stump.  Does anyone
>know if this stuff would make a good mulch?
>Jeanne (still waiting for the shasta daisies which now have 4 small
>nubbins and one big nubbin).
>

Hi Jeanne,
 You definitely want that organic matter, but I would mix it into your
compost pile instead of using it immediately as a mulch. "Fresh chips" need
some time to break down before they are benificial to your plants. Compost
is added to beds to help improve the soil and add nutrients. The nutrients
came from the surrounding soil that the chips were in!
 (Hmmm, let me try again.) The fresh chips from your friend will require
additional nitrogen to help break them down into wonderful compost. If you
take them from her yard and immediatly place them around your plants as a
beautiful decorative mulch, the chips will have to absorb nitrogen from the
soil surrounding your perennials!
 The idea is to add carbon(wood chips, fall leaves) to nitrogen (fresh
grass clippings) in some type of 'bin' to create really great dirt (compost).
 You generally do this in a seperate area from the flower beds. Then after
a month, or several months, you add the compost to the garden, usually by
layering it over the dirt in 2-3 inches (assuming you have enough for
this!) and maybe scratching it in a bit.

 There are other composting methods such as sheet composting, municipal
composting (my favorite! 18 inches deep of partially finished compost in
all the beds 5 years ago), and a wide assortment of bins/barrels/containers
to do small batches of compost.

This is really just a thin intro to composting. It is usually a little more
involved, depending on what raw materials you have to work with and how
fast you want available compost.

Matt (king of the run-on sentences)

Matt Trahan  <matttrahan@ecsu.campus.mci.net>
USDA zone 8, AHS heat zone 7, Sunset zone 31, northeastern N.C.

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