Lesson Learned: Compost Isn't Compost Until It's Composted

Fresh wood chips do not give your veggie starts a boost. In fact, they suck the life (or nitrogen) right out of them.

We learned this lesson a little too late. All excited after taking down a sick maple tree, we spread some of the resulting wood chips in our garden bed. A couple weeks ago, we planted some healthy starts. Luckily we hadn’t spread the wood chips thoroughly enough, because all of the starts that were in the vicinity of a healthy amount of the wood chips quickly faltered and died. My pepper plants that were well away from this area: flourishing. I was confused at first, wondering if I just hadn’t watered enough or that whether the cold snap had gotten them.

And then I learned that while wood chips are great compost ingredients, they’re not any good to plants until they’re actually – drum roll please – composted.

Once the wood chips are composted, they’ll release all kinds of crazy nitrogen and goodies that they sucked up while composting. But until they’re black and ooey gooey, keep them away from your tender plants.

What am I doing now? In addition to watering my pepper, tomato, chard, lettuce, and strawberry plants that are blessedly out of harm’s way, I will be shoveling woodchips out of my garden and into an area where they can finish composting so that I can use it next year. And I’ll be ordering some more TAGRO Potting Soil to refill my garden bed. And making sure to keep the rest of the wood chips far away from my veggies.