Re: stump of a huge pin oak

At 8:20 PM -0600 7/13/98, Matt Trahan wrote:

>>From: jeanne latta <jplatta@yahoo.com>
>>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!

It was my understanding that wood chip mulches only rob nitrogen from
the soil surface where the wood chips contact the soil directly, not
deeper in the soil around the plants' feeder roots. After the mulch
breaks down it returns the nitrogen back to the soil. I thought
nitrogen deficits were only of concern when incorporating wood chips
into the soil as an amendment or with mulching very tiny seedlings. Am
I mistaken?


---
Peggy Enes (peggy@unicom.net)   Zone 5/6


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