Kay Easton wrote in message ...
In article , Mike Lyle
writes
Kay Easton wrote in message news:XCFUw8K1McU$Ewmx@sc
arboro.demon.co.uk...
In article , Mike Lyle
writes

Time to mount my trusty hobby-horse again! Used as mulch, timber waste
will take nitrogen out of your soil as it rots, and could encourage
harmful fungi.

Are you sure of that point? Fungi tend to be fairly fussy about their
requirements, and I wouldn't have thought that most species which would
enjoy the rotting wood would be inclined to attack living trees, which
is what I presume you mean by 'harmful'?

I said "could", not "will", but I wouldn't risk it. The choice is:
throw it away? a bit of reasonable firewood? or a not-very-attractive
mulch which at least one other gardener isn't happy about on hygiene
grounds?

Nick is very confident about this; but I'd rather be cautious when
suggesting what to do in somebody else's garden. Leaving a few twigs
about just isn't the same issue as spreading a layer of undecayed wood
chips over your flower-beds. Even if there's no real danger from
fungi, the slugs will probably love it.

It doesn't feel like good gardening practice to use an
unrotted mulch, even if it doesn't, as I fear this could, help honey
fungus or something to get a foothold.

How harmful exactly is honey fungus? It's one of our commonest fungi,
present in most of our woodland, one of the top 10 fungi most often
found on fungus forays. If it were as dangerous as some people say,
wouldn't most of our woodland be dead by now?

I've always assumed that it's a matter of ecological balance. A garden
is a small artificial intensive environment where everything is
encouraged to happen faster, and where a few failures are conspicuous.
Garden plants are also mostly the result of a lot of breeding: like
domestic breeds of dogs, few of them would be able to sustain a
population in the wild.

In the garden we encourage conditions which many pests and diseases
thrive in: lush growth, same species crowded together, high nutrient
levels, that kind of thing.


It would take ages to rot it in a heap with a bought-in
source of nitrogen,

No, it doesn't. In a mixed heap it doesn't slow the process at all.

We're talking about a whole thirty-foot tree, not the litter from the
rabbit-hutch!

Yeah, fair point. I was forgetting that.

Will there be enough other material to make an effective
mixed heap? It can't rot without nitrogen, and that nitrogen must come
from somewhere. The bigger the chips the tree is shredded into, the
longer the process will take. I'm not just spouting old husbands'
tales, I'm trying to be logical.

I'm trying to balance what you're saying against one of the main
problems facing our native flora, which is that we've been chucking so
much nitrogen around for so many years that our meadows are so rich that
many of our native flowers just can't compete. the first step in
creating a wildflower meadow is, in most cases, spending several years
*reducing* the nitrogen level.

OK, you're talking gardening, I'm talking wildflowers - but is reducing
the nitrogen level of our gardens really going to be an utter disaster?

No, personally I don't think so: I use the lowest possible level of
inputs in my own garden, and use as many wild forms as I can. The
result looks great to me, but it isn't what everybody wants. I'm fond
of saying I even planted the weeds!

Anyhow, bringing in nitrogen to help material rot is different from
bringing it in to pile on the beds. If I've got my science right, most
of it will be released into the atmosphere, rather than retained in
the compost.

Mike.