We love woodchips. Fourteen years back, when we were just getting started, we planted about 1,000 asparagus plants. We planted them in an area which had been used for nursery production by our predecessor Jim Brown, and so the soil was compacted, clayey, and had a lot of gravel mixed in. Over the next seven years, as we fought the Johnson grass that had been lying in hiding in the early spring when we planted the asparagus, we learned some important lessons. One; Asparagus is not a great crop to keep in the very center of your farm; it's bound to get a bit weedy in the summer, and will be depressing to walk by every day... Two, perennial weeds and perennial crops are not a good combo; it's very hard to get good weed control of perennials when you can't remove the crop too. Thirdly, wood chips make beautiful soil, given some time. We learned this last lesson by adding wood chips to the asparagus beds every year for several years in a row. Finally, when we gave up on asparagus in that location, and started aggressively fighting the weeds, we discovered that the 18" of chips we had added to these beds over the years had turned into some of the prettiest soil you'll ever see. It's black, super soft, excellent water holding capacity, and just a joy to grow vegetables in. For the past seven years we have been applying this lesson by accumulating woodchips, spent grain, coffee grounds, fairgrounds bedding, fall leaves, grass clippings, and myriad other forms of organic matter, composting it, spreading it, and letting it age. We've been rewarded with long straight carrots, tremendous yields of tomatoes, resilient and healthy lettuces, and so many other wonderful vegetables, that I sometimes feel like we're growing vegetables in Iowa, or somewhere else with amazing topsoil, instead of a hilltop in The Ozarks.
I hope you're enjoying the fruits of all this soil building, and that you have a cool place to hang out on these sweltering afternoons.
Thanks for helping us build soil, grow food, and create community.
Curtis.
P.S., here's a video we put together last year about our soilbuilding here on the farm;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIEgPIM5BnM&list=PLIvvsYkwPjbb2AbCfcQ-HxKHTvVeZ5Zio
