Hi,
I have a row of red pines planted alongside of a road in front of my house
for a privacy screen and to reduce road dust. They are about 10-15 feet
tall now and are growing quite nicely. But I have a problem controlling
weeds around them. Before when the trees were smaller it was possible to
mow between them with small lawn mower. Now the trees are starting to grow
together (as planned) and it is too difficult to get a mower or weed wacker
between them. I don't want to trim the lower branches off. I need to
control the weeds some other way. I have a large pile of wood chips from
branches that could fill in under the trees but I have heard that the wood
chips will deplete the soil of nitrogen badly needed by these trees. Am I
correct in thinking that the wood chips will harm the trees growth? Does
anyone have a recommendation? Thanks in advance.
Steve

On 23 Jun 2003 15:46:39 GMT, wrote:
Hi,
I have a row of red pines planted alongside of a road in front of my house
for a privacy screen and to reduce road dust. They are about 10-15 feet
tall now and are growing quite nicely. But I have a problem controlling
weeds around them. Before when the trees were smaller it was possible to
mow between them with small lawn mower. Now the trees are starting to grow
together (as planned) and it is too difficult to get a mower or weed wacker
between them. I don't want to trim the lower branches off. I need to
control the weeds some other way. I have a large pile of wood chips from
branches that could fill in under the trees but I have heard that the wood
chips will deplete the soil of nitrogen badly needed by these trees. Am I
correct in thinking that the wood chips will harm the trees growth? Does
anyone have a recommendation? Thanks in advance.

Wood chips will use up nitrogen as they rot. However, if you mulch on top
of the soil and do not mix the wood chips into the soil, they should not
remove unreasonable amounts of nitrogen.

If you notice a nitrogen deficiency, you can always replace the nitrogen
using blood meal, fish meal, or any other slow release nitrogen fertilizer.

The city of Seattle uses wood chip mulch for most (all?) of their new
plantings and to my knowledge, they do not go around adding nitrogen after
the fact.

Lay them on thick, but *lay* them on - don't dig them in...

--

Matt...