India-Aslan writes
Maybe the wood chippings aren't such a good idea after all :-(
Nothings ever easy is it!! Just to get this straight.... I have bark
chippings around plants in my garden at home so why is it OK to put the
bark chippings that you buy in the garden centre around your plants but
it is NOT OK to put wood chippings around them. Is it that vegetables
are more nitrogen greedy than other plants or is it to do with the bark
chippings being rotted down already? I'm sorry if I'm being a bit dense
here. Thanks. India

It's mainly that people differ in how important they feel the nitrogen
loss is. There's not much difference in that respect between bark
chippings and wood chippings. Some people feel you shouldn't use either
because of the nitrogen loss, some people feel that it is a transitory
effect, some people find that putting either around plants doesn't make
any difference. Maybe it depends on how rich the soil is to begin with?

Wood chips will be a bit thicker than bark chippings so won't rot down
so quickly, meaning that next year the top of the soil will be more
open, with bigger chunks, and seed might be more likely to dry out, or
find it difficult to struggle out from under a large (compared with the
seed) pice of partially rotted wood - this is what Steve was warning
against.
--
Kay