The use of Bark Chips in Your Garden can create a whole new lavishing texture for your garden. This stunning material of the timber industry comes with various attractive benefits to lighten up your gardening space.
With variations in grades and types of timber- there are many misconceptions and confusion about the dos and don’ts of this product.
So, if you are thinking about what you would accomplish with the remaining excess bark chippings, don’t throw them, because we have documented some brilliantly creative notions for you to use those extra chippings.
These are some of the experts’ suggestions for including this sustainable material in your plan.
Using Bark Chipping For Constructing Meandering Pathways
Off course, you can use bark chippings for constructing pathways through your outer area. These bark chippings are sustainable, low- maintenance and compliment your grassland by furnishing it with a whole new natural and aesthetic texture.
After all, what else can be more captivating than a dry, cushioning and low-maintenance pathway that entangles its way around your garden area?
As larger bark chips don’t break down quickly, they will comparatively last longer than the smaller chips.
When landscaping, you’ll need a quite thick layer of bark chippings, presumably twice what you use to cover the topsoil. It will permit the bark chippings to move further from the foot traffic.
You can also use the broken-down wooden chips as a significant source of mulch for your vegetable garden.
Using Bark-Chippings as a Magical Mulch
When any wooden material is broken down, the micro-organisms soak all the nitrogen around them. This is called nitrogen Sequestration.
So try to dodge fresh bark chippings that suck the amount of nitrogen from the soil. For synthesizing some things, it’s better to use bark chips as mulch with some precautions.
There are 5 tremendous benefits of wooden chippings, which include:
1. Weed control:
You can spread them directly on any surface ensuring that they are covered at least 2 inches deep on the surface.
You can replenish them with a sheet of landscape material from preventing the underneath soil and protect them against the weeds, whilst still permitting the rainwater to drain through.
While some gardeners are equally mindful of this fact, but they still choose to use plastic sheet mulch as it’s cheaper and easier to use.
However, it’s a well-known fact that plastic mulch quickly leaches chemicals in the soil and that’s why it must be disposed of in a few years.
2. Water retentiveness:
Bark chippings deliver good moisture to the soil, prevent it from evaporation during summer and reduce the effect of heavy rain falls.
So, when you are using wooden chips, there’s no need to irrigate your plants regularly.
3. Prevents soil- erosion:
Bare soil is always vulnerable to getting washed off by heavy rainfall or wind. Bark chippings prevent soil erosion and small flooding after summer storms.
Whilst plastic mulch deflects the water and causes water flooding around the soil, bark mulch helps the water leach through the soil.
4. Prevention against pests and diseases:
bark chippings prevent the soil from fungus and from other diseases such as scabs caused in apple trees.
5. Maintaining soil temperature:
By cooling down the hot soil and warming down the cold soil, bark chips help to maintain a moderate temperature for the soil.
Using Bar Chippings as Raised-Beds
Creating a lasagna bed refers to creating a heap of composting in a place, meaning building a thin- layer of carbon-rich “brown “and nitrogen-rich “green” materials.
Bark chips add extra comfort and stability to the soil. Because of their bulky and carbon-rich nature, they are the best choice for creating new raised beds using the lasagna bed process.
So if your growing area has partially rotted, it’s better to build some new growing areas in your garden.
Various bark chips come under the category of carbon-rich substances, which can be effectively used as an ideal choice of product for your raising beds.
Using Bark Chippings as a Substrate for the Cultivation of Mushrooms
Bark chippings act as a natural substrate for growing mushrooms. So if you like growing fruits and vegetables, you can consider growing mushrooms too.
It will be something unique and interesting in your garden. However, very few gardeners know the fact that when you start using bark chips in your garden, there will be a natural growth of mushrooms in your garden.
Different substrates grow different kinds of mushrooms in your garden. For example, an oyster mushroom grows on sawdust, coffee grounds, and even on an old book, likewise, a wine cap mushroom grows in piles of wood, etc.
So, if you want to grow mushrooms, it’s necessary to select the type of mushroom you want to plant and get the substrate with enough spores in it.
After that, you need to pack the spores in a patch of pre-soaked bark chips under a shady surface.
Using Bark Mulch for Providing Authentic Touch to Your Containers
Bark chips are considered a great source of plant mulching. One of the most practical ways to use bark chips is as garden mulch for your plants.
It acts as a great source of moisture to the soil and helps them to maintain a healthy environment for them. They also help to give an additional authentic touch to your gardening pots and containers.
But, it is not as simple as it might occur; you have to be extra cautious regarding where you should and shouldn’t use it.
Before using them, be careful of the material, and check if it’s suitable for mulching or not.
When you use bark chips in your pots it simply means you have to provide the least possible amount of water to your plants in summer.
Also don’t use bark mulch for ericaceous plants such as rhododendrons, Gaultheria, Leucothoe, Nyassa, Kalmia, Pseudowintera, Styrax and Vaccinum, etc.
Designing A DIY Patio for Your Garden
A cheap, budget-friendly courtyard that is open to the sky, what else do you want to enhance your garden?
Bark- chippings are comparatively less expensive than other patio materials, but build an authentic rustic vibe in your garden areas.
All you have to do is simply top up the chippings as they tend to become trampled over a long period.
However, before putting wood chippings, level up the surface by layering it with landscaping fabric. Lastly and most importantly don’t forget to clean the area from pests.
Using Bark- Chips for Making Organic Biochar
Biochar is a charcoal-like substance that is produced by burning a few organic materials. You can use bark chips for making biochar.
It is a great alternative for improving the organic fertility in your garden. Biochar is extremely effective for free-draining and nutrient-poor soils.
It increases soil carbon to prevent various climate crises. It looks similar to charcoal; on the contrary, it is created with a different process to decrease the contamination and safety store carbon.
Final Thoughts
Often underrated, wooden chips are usually taken for granted by various gardeners worldwide, some of which you have read in our article.
Only a few know the actual usefulness of bark chips. Garden bark chippings are undoubtedly the most affordable yet the most sustainable and easy to use.