Wood chips... leaves and other mulch sources

Where to get wood chips or whatever materials. Free most importantly.
It's autumn - now. Meaning the time is now. The nature will work for you in colder and likely more humid weather (if you are in an arid climate like I am).

Here are several ways to get free mulch.

1) Chip and collect your own wood chips. All the branches , leaves.
Leaves are free with this method, but wood chips are not.
Chipping your own works if your location is remote and you have to process the tree waste and can not do hugelculture. Chipping your own as it is very tedious work for not a lot of return. Household chipper will produce after about 20 or 30 minutes maybe a cubic foot of chipped tree waste. It is good to cover 2-3 square feet of garden. Residential-sized wood chippers that can handle branches up to 3 inches (8 cm) are fairly costly (upwards of $500 new). If you can get a deal on a used one, it may be more economical, but it certainly isn’t all that efficient. Don’t forget that your “free” wood chips are now costing you a lot.

2) Free chips can be collected so from craigslist. Look for the local adds, and post one that you want wood chips. People who remove trees will drop off free. All depends on the location and how 'on the way' is your property.
These come in loads of 10-20 yards. That's your best bet.

3) Free leaves from neighbors in bags. Go pick up and the time is now. Post an add on local craigslist for leaves, for straw bales, for grass. I made me keyhole garden like that with free logs, leaves, grass and branches. It did grow over 200 pounds of food and I do not even know how many zucchini did I give away from that garden... that one went a bit crazy...
Lots of leaves can be collected from local neighborhoods. Have tarp in your car that will minimize the mess and make the clean up easy. If there is a concern about leaves flying look for local coffee processor, they will give away burlap. Starbucks will not, not likely...

4) Free grass clippings - pick up in summer for compost, dry grass makes very good mulch and no, that one does not fly away as easy as many would think. Neither do chipped leaves. These will come your way in spring when people do power-rake the lawns. These are handy and good mulch as well. It does not fly in the wind much. Surprisingly...

5) Search on google maps , white pages or what have you in your area for tree service, start calling and get yourself on the list for chips drop off. Say that you take pine as well (and no it's not bad, not too acidic, especially if you are on alkaline soil like I am that's the chips you want, they do decompose just fine and make good soil) . These are large loads 10-20 yards.

6) Call local power utility company and get yourself on the drop off list there, they all trim trees near power lines. These can be not a full load and if you are on the way they will drop off.

7) Call your local municipality/county and see what is their waste management doing and if they give away wood chips to public for water conservation. Lots of places do. Most will not load your truck except of particular days. This way one can get free smaller loads + truck gas.

8) Call local waste management. Some municipalities not only recycle they also compost.
They likely to have wood chips pick up location. They most likely will not load the truck. Some will on specific days in spring.

9) use https://getchipdrop.com Did not have whole lot of luck with that one so... Was on the list forever and nothing.

10) Pay attention on the road if you see that wood chips truck call them and say do you want to drop off wood chips guys? I'm right behind you here is the address. That's how I found me lots and lots of very free wood chips from local tree service that happened to work in the area often.

11) see local utility company or whatever tree people working the tree ask if they need a drop off and give them your address and contact. These personal contacts were most successful for me.

12) Keep the list of tree services. If you got on the drop off list once does not mean they still have your info, keep it updated and make sure you still want the wood chips.

13) Ask around if you see tree people working. Those loads that are close always are free.

14) Some tree people will deliver for a fee. That works well for people who are more 'out of the way' and remote.

About keyhole garden

In our high mountain desert when winter and summer have very little moisture and soil I've got on a pasture is lacking organic material (was overgrazed and became dry lot in the past) water conservation is very important.

Key hole garden building stage 1

Here is where I've got the idea.

It's called keyhole garden. Cold compost bed with compost pile in the middle
Hm... that got me started. If I make central basket bigger I can out my worms in there and itschiken safe :)

So I'e got busy asking for sticks (I have no trees that can produce anything of that sort yet. One man's trash is another's treasure, right :), it's tree trimming season now or just before and no large trash collecting days in the area (and cities now want home owners to pay 65$+ for that)
So, I made some calls, posted couple messages and got my materials. Logs were dropped by local tree service all nice and health and some are very good length and height.
And I also had dirt piles I needed to do something about... at least cover.
So here is my start, pull the temp cover out and make a general shape

 Like so... make a hole

 Start setting sticks

 and I've got a lot dropped of, good enough for more than one garden... beans trellises are in order :) the rest will be bottom of my hugel-BTE-cold compost bed

 And I've got grass and leaves.

 And truck load of logs

 So I put logs around, not all the way, but there will be more logs...

 Some of the logs were better for the start of a spiral bed... another dirt pile transformation :)

 Here is the start when I put most of the logs and made the flatter prep surface

And here is mostly completed keyhole, back side needs more logs, but one can see the layers here

dirt, and wood chips and whatever chicken poop and... used chicken bedding collected from my chicken coop,

then leaves


then grass.

 then a bit of compost, I don not have whole lot so I'm using that sparingly on this bed, when I bring more I put more of that and layer of wood chips on top

 and a bit of wood chips on top.
 and water well. keyhole garden and spiral garden are in front of the orchard, southern part of it.

More materials for the to be spiral. will be done in the same way.

Spiral garden started

I have plenty of very non demanding ground cover like plants that will produce, protect from rabbits and loosen the soils there.

Walking onins do well on the 'perimeter' so rabbits have not that much interest

Nettle,,, will think where to put it later... for now in the garden because the plent needed to adapt to my soil...

 These onions will remain in the garden, but maybe not,... will decide later do I move them to spiral garden or not.

 Ans these I'm hoping to naturalize there. For now in the garden. I'll need a tree in the center of the spiral and some bushes... I did not decide, but for the ground cover in spring I do like these...

Lavage will go there with time. also horse radish. somewhere near the exterior wall of the garden, where taller stumps are

And I do like some daffidiles, for now I enjoy them in the garden, maybe I'll leave them there

Meanwhile in the garden overwintereed char got a very good start. I think I like that method a lot.

 Here we are.

Garden season retrospective. Part 2 of N

Permaculture/no dig/ back to Eden/lasagna gardens do take some time to set up. It is mostly easy on the budget work because one would go after free materials (cardboard from store, wood chips, free manure, weeds - green bio mass, grass clippings, whatever kitchen vegetable waste), layer these, let the nature do the thing.

After one year one looks and learns what does the soil do.

First one looks at what do they have to start with.

And here is diagnostic hole soil profile in the area near garden, not far. As it is on 'pasture'... not like I have anyone grazing there, well except of free ranging chickens.

 This is 1-2 inches of top soil, after that is different variations of clay. This is taken after multiple snow storms in January. Our so called wet season. This is how not covered soil cracks in winter, these are small, in summer we can have half of a tree root system ton by one of these cracks, they can ho several feet deep, several inches wide.

Took samples in different areas where soil was not covered, this pasture is not bad as is started from bare dirt dry lot.

 And here is right next to those not covered areas where the soil was mulched on pasture between the clump grass

 And the grass there is green and started growing in January-February

 Here is near new wind block (has long way growing)

And same but 3-rd season in making in the garden. "Black" soil is composted wood chips and garden waste and earth worms that are taken between the rows, put on top (after tomatoes were frozen well and chopped and dropped as well). The soil is not black technically, at leas when I wash my dirty garden clothing it never was, it's like deep deep brown stuff. It is soil under construction, and many different types of wood chips went there, branches, bark, and what else, leafy trees, evergreens, pines, name it, all kinds of trees and whatever was on them (hopefully life forms).

 Here more of these rows in making, tomatoes and other remains being chopped

 Garden is covered like so

 We found main irrigation pipe... hard way... via t-post hitting it in the middle. Now there is a separate garden zone.

 And wood chips are loaded in between the rows so more worms will do the work. From December to spring there is plenty of time and moisture to get it all settled and done.

By evening one has this nicely mulched and ready for next seazon

This is in August in dead heat above 90F+ all drip irrigation, one can see how does the pasture look like, like a fire hazard. Yet mulched garden is quite green

 And it produced not badly either

Folk who try it say fod tastes better and many comment on tomatoes. These stain my hands brown in no time. So I actually do pick my tomatoes in medical gloves. Or I can scrub my hands for a very long time.

And there was in in good bit more one can manage. I'd say chickens were eating well too

And eggs taste better...