The Mudhole

[BeardedChick]

I need to call the local guys - I need woodchips for my garden walkways.

Woodchips WILL break down over time and may make things more mushy. I don't know if that will give you trouble. We put gravel down in one of our corrals and that has stayed pretty nice...

If you can get hardwood chips, it would last longer than softwoods.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

I thought I read somewhere (not here, mind you) that wood chips in a consistently muddy spot that has no where to drain off is just going to turn into a nasty soupy mudhole, making things worse. Like what BeardedChicks mentioned.

I guess I'll go off on a tangent to say that if I were you I'd use gravel instead of woodchips. Not the stuff they put on roads, but the more coarser stuff (dang, wish I remembered the name of it!).

edit: i think it's called pit rock...we used it to lay down a foundation for installing hopper bottoms for our grain bins, and putting in a bit of a roadway for the B-trains that come in to haul out the barley.

 

[GrassFarmerGalloway]

WRB, I was kinda hoping to be able to use the manure/carbon mix to compost me garden. Me garden already has too many rocks.

You can use wood chips, sawdust, etc, but it's a 30-1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen. Lots and lots of chips. Where to find them.

 

[CowCop]

Several ideas:

We have the local tree man dump chips here, since they are STILL cleaning up after the Dec 11th Ice Storm from Hell.

Have been using it for bedding along with 400 bags of leaves from the entire neighborhood.

You town may still be chipping trees as well from the storms.

Make a few phone calls.

If anyone in your town is doing some logging, they chip alot and sell the chips by the tractor trailer load to the power companies and might be able to get a deal on a truckload since they wont have to drive it far.

For really muddy areas, I use a combo of chips and Canadian Straw.
the straw lets the sun heat it up and dry it out faster than hay or other materials.

Take some photos of your mud pit.

 

[nightshade]

try your local tree trimming service usually they will give them to you by the truck load that way they do not have to pay to bump them else wheres.

 

[2468herdsrgr8]

For our horse shelter we put rocks down and packed it down with a packer and then we put alot of sand /gravel down and packed it .....now I wish we did it right outside of the horse shelter because its dry as can be in the shelter but right outside its muddy....I was told by the gravel company that rocks and gravel/sand would fix the problem...