Free Wood Chips With Free Delivery
Hi! I know weeds are on many of your minds this time of year! If you are growing in the northern hemisphere, and if you’re in the peak of your summer season, you may be dealing with lots of pressure from weeds.
Weed barrier / landscape fabric can get expensive, and if you’re trying to work on your soil and maintain beds that are open and ready for more plants you may want compost, mulch, or wood chips for weed control.
We use wood chips for weed control around larger plants. Chips are not a great mulch for small or delicate seedlings, but we find that they are fine for us around herbaceous perennials, shrubs, and trees. They are also great for using in aisles or for just covering a bed that you aren’t ready to plant into to keep weed seeds at bay. We choose wood chips over straw.
In our experience, straw can be a great hiding place for PESTS, especially tarnished plant bug. If you grow plants like dahlias, rudbeckia, hops, you may want to think hard before you bring the straw in to use as mulch on your property. Tarnished plant bugs love to overwinter in weedy meadows and grassy areas. Beds that are mulched with straw are also great tarnished plant bug habitats.
Here are some tips for getting free wood chips delivered for free to your property. I wish I’d known these tricks from the start of my growing career.
1.You may be in an area with active Chip Drop arborists. Chip Drop is a service that connects arborists with gardeners who are eager to receive wood chips. All you do is sign up for the service. Identify a place on your property where you’d like to have chips dropped, and let the service connect you with an arborist who is looking to get rid of some chips from trees they’ve cleared in your area.
2. Post a sign. We are not in an area where there are active Chip Drop arborists. Most tree companies in our area have land where they can keep chips, or they sell them to a local sawmill. But we’ve had at least 5 deliveries in the last couple years from local tree companies who are based in different towns and just want to off load their wood chips rather than haul them 45 mins to an hour away. Score! We made a goofy sign and it sits at the end of driveway so that people can see it when driving by. We’ve even had local residents tell their tree companies to give us their wood chips!
3. Call your town highway department. Let them know that you are happy to receive wood chips. Just this week, someone from the town highway department called. They had cleared a large tree and wanted to know if we’d take the wood chips! (They had also seen our sign) Yes! They came right over and dumped a huge truck full for us. We used them to mulch some of our peony beds the very next day.
4. If you see a tree company at work in your area and you have a moment stop and write down your address and phone number and give it to them so they can reach out if they need a place to bring their chips.
A note of caution: Ask what type of chipped material you’ll be receiving. Avoid bringing any kind of species that are invasive or that can re grow from chips. For example— you won’t want to bring in roadside debris from chipped plants that might include Japanese knotweed.
I hope this is helpful for some of you who may be looking for inexpensive ways to bring in some weed control materials. Share your questions below. Cheers!
