John DeBoo wrote:

Any reason why one shouldn't add the wood chips after cutting
forewood with a chainsaw to their compost pile? Chips would be
mostly Pine.

In 1974 the Weyerhaeuser Company leased 24 acres for a rhododendron
species collection at the Company's corporate headquarters in Federal
Way, Washington. The garden area is called the Rhododendron Species
Botanical Garden and there are over 10,000 rhododendrons growing in a
beautiful woodland setting covering 22 acres. For obvious reasons they
had tons of wood chips available, probably mostly Douglas Fir, but in
any case a mixture of softwoods. The wood chips were used as planting
medium for the rhododendrons.

Today, over 20 years later, the wood chips have turned into a slimmy
gunk that started killing the rhododendrons. The Rhododendron Species
Foundation has undertaken a project to lift all of the plants and place
them on a mixture of sand and gravel so they will have some drainage.
This work is rather impressive since many of the plants are huge now.
What is most impressive is how shallow the root structure is on the
tallest plants.

Wood chips require much nitrogen to decompose. Once they decompose they
turn into this slimmy gunk. They need to be mixed with mineral soil and
other organic matter. If used in too high a concentration they will
eventually become lethal.

The RSF is located at: www.rhodygarden.org

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