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- An experiment growing cucurbits in woodchips.

Innovation can be risky, but so can food growing. In this instance, the experiment was a success, and there’s even room for improvement.

YOTAM KAY been growing vegetables organically and sharing his love for growing plants since 2005. Yotam and his partner Niva established Pakaraka Permaculture Market Garden and Education Centre in Thames, and authored The Abundant Garden.

While we have been using woodchips for landscaping, paths, around trees and perennials, and for making compost for many years, we had never grown veges in it. This came about because over many months, we had accumulated a large woodchip pile bought from a local arborist. After mulching heavily around the gardens, we had such a surplus we decided to experiment with it in one of our plots.

Another area we had made into a garden the year before had been designated as a hedge prior to Covid hitting our shores. It had been covered with woodchips for about a year, and the soil this created was one of the healthiest I have ever seen on our farm. The rich fungal activity that the woodchips encourage did wonders to our soil.

As I was concerned that the woodchips would use up the nitrogen in the soil and deprive any veges we would plant into the bed, we did a few things to minimise this potential threat to our crops. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t always enough.

The most important factor was to let the woodchips cure and mature over eight months or more before spreading it over the plot. The other significant action we took (which we only did with some beds) was to lay the woodchips on the bed and wait a month or two before transplanting into it. In theory, this would allow the woodchips in contact with the ground to decompose and bring the nitrogen levels back up.

Before sharing what we learnt and would do differently, I want to cover more about what we did this season. We used about 40 cubic metres of woodchips to cover a plot of nine beds, which, including paths, is about 150 square metres.

The paths got a heavier application, and we averaged a 25cm cover of woodchips. We spread them out in various ways and over several weeks – for most beds, we used a wheelbarrow, but as the woodchip pile was just on the edge of the garden, we also shovelled straight from the pile onto the bed.

We grew our summer crops of courgettes and cucumbers here. They fit in well with our crop rotation, and we knew they’d appreciate the stable moisture levels the woodchips would provide. (We also knew that we would appreciate the almost non-existent weeding requirements!)

As cucumbers and courgettes are planted far apart, they go easily in the woodchips, compared to a crop that would need to be spaced 20 or 30cm apart.

This plot had only been converted to a vege garden for a year before planting. During that time, the beds had been forked, rocks removed, custom organic soil mineral mix had been applied and several compost applications.

While keeping the soil healthy is one of my top priorities, I also aim for high yields and healthy plants, using the least energy to make it happen. As the soil looked great, and the woodchips would enrich the soil with organic matter over the growing season, I had decided not to spread compost before applying the woodchips.

We had a great healthy crop of cucumbers and courgettes, which included three courgettes and six cucumber successions. More than 500kg of courgettes and about 2000kg of cucumbers later, we think this experiment worked out well.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, and there are a few things we would do differently next time.

After transplanting, we could see that a few successions still got stressed from the lack of nitrogen. They had gone pale and didn’t immediately start growing as fast as expected. To remedy this, we pushed the woodchips aside to make a larger circle without woodchips into which we would transplant. Alternatively, we can apply compost to the whole bed or even just the area where the plants are going, which should give the plants the nutrient boost they need. Other natural fertilisers such as fish should also do the trick.

The other thing we can do to prevent stress in plants is to let the woodchips mature for longer before applying them to the bed.

Keeping an eye on the soil’s moisture levels was more challenging. At one point, when the production of our courgette plants slowed down unexpectedly, I realised that I needed to increase the amount of water they received. Once I did, the plants sprang up and kept producing for much longer.

An unexpected negative was that in windy weather, the fruits of the cucumbers and courgettes got scratched. In the home garden, that won’t matter, but for us market gardeners, it was a problem, and we would probably opt for growing plants that won’t be affected by this issue.

Overall, we loved this way of growing, with its low maintenance and high productivity, and it was a good use of a local resource. We will definitely be doing this again.

This season, we tried something different in one of our plots. For the first time, we decided to use woodchips to cover a whole vegetable plot.

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2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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