tenplay wrote:
We had two large dead trees cut down and a lot of trees trimmed last
week and then ground down into wood chips. Our intention was to
gradually spread the chips around our large garden areas. The tree
cutters left the huge pile of wood chips in an area at the base of three
trees. Yesterday our neighbors, who are really into gardening, informed
us that we had to move the chip pile away from the base of the three
trees quickly, that they would die from suffocation otherwise. Is this
true? If so, how long do we have to move them? Also must we be careful
not to spread the chips too close to our garden plants? Thanks for any
advice/suggestions.

I'm curious about this too, we just had some brush clearing going on in
our area and we told them they could dump a couple of loads of the chips
in our yard as I wanted some to cover some trails I have hacked through
our treed acreage. Anyway, my wife thought it would be a good idea to
mulch some of the trees we have with them, and yesterday we noticed that
a newly planted mountain ash was showing rusty discolorations on the
tips of its leaves. Now we are wondering if it could be the chips from
the trees, which were mostly black poplar, trembling aspen and some
willow.