Don't Add Wood Chips to Your Garden without Doing This or Else...

Jump to the following parts of the Episode: 00:00 Episode Start 00:10 My favorite You Pick Farm In Las Vegas 00:47 Biggest Challenges Growing in Las Vegas, Nevada 02:15 Benefits of Adding Wood Chips to your garden - how to use 03:49 Comparison of 3 ways to grow pumpkins in the field 04:18 Using Wood Chips only to grow pumpkins 05:24 Using Reflective Plastic to grow pumpkins 06:09 Using Wood Chips + Special Free Ingredient Locally Sourced 07:07 Special Ingredient You Need to Add to Wood Chips before spreading 08:35 Where to get this free organic amendment near you 09:35 Summary of Episode

I'm in the desert too (El Paso) and I'm amazed at what wood chips have done in a short period to amend my soil. Well...to build my soil actually. I just had sandy dirt before.

The reason the coffee grounds work so well with wood chips is because wood chips when they decompose actually deplete the nitrogen levels. Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen so it offsets the the nitrogen depletion and feeds the pumpkins.

Thank you for your work! I've been using all my coffee grounds for about 2 years now.

I'm not poor...I'm on a tight budget. My yard is caliche(literally). So, for 2 yrs, I got over a hundred bags of leaves and pounds of coffee grounds (Starbucks, but no longer...🙁). I mixed it well and dug up 6" of the caliche, so it wouldn't mold. 2 yrs later: 18" of black gold! Hard labor paid off. ❤️Ya! 👍✝️🙏

John you need a wind guard on your mic. Excellent ideas of repurposing local organic waste materials! Thanks once more for a great episode.

I love palm mulch cuz the florida weather eats everything. Any wood mulch I can get I love. Up to 5 trucks on tiny 1/4 acre in 2 years. Crazy how fast it gets eaten and turns right back to sand. Slowly adding more and more perennials and it slowly getting better.

And don't forget the spent brewery grains! I made some epic compost with wood chips, coffee grounds and spent brewery grains.

Learned from Leadfarmer that coffee grounds are great for citrus trees,but now I see here,not just for citrus,but for all plants! Missed the IRIE Premiere John, but liking👍it very much and greetings 👋from central Mexico, hoping you keep having an IRIE weekend! 😊

Great video! I just laid down all my wood chips, and now I will add the coffee grounds! Thank you for the excellent advice.

love the method of adding wood chips and coffee grounds to the sand to make a nutrient rich soil

It's pretty awesome to see the plants grow in different conditions, and it's so reassuring to know that there is a natural way that works just as well as plastic! Please be mindful of PFAS. I'd rather have lower yields over forever chemicals.

haha this is what I use for my potted plants...I use coffee & tea grounds on top because I drink coffee and tea every day. Add your crushed eggshells as well.

i remember working in a golf shop and this old guy would always pour his leftover coffee into this tree type plant. there were 2 of them in the shop. the one with the coffee was noticeably healthier and bigger. i always remembered that.

I've been mixing woodchips with organic matter in composting for 40 years here in the UK & get around 30lb a week of a mixture of tea leaves, coffee grounds & discarded salad material from a local cafe. Add that to all the other organic material & I have roughly 2½ tons of compost every year to spread over just under 100yds² of actual growing beds I add around 1-2" of my own compost on the beds every December & the same of wood chips on the paths between. My soil has gone from pretty much 2" of topsoil over orange clay to 18" of dark brown, friable, no dig heaven in that time, rarely requires watering & never needs additional fertiliser. Yield averages around 10lbs/sq yd on the open beds & double that in the polytunnel (this is continuos cropping with one harvest being immediately replaced with the next seasonal planting, eg autumn sown broad beans, harvested late May & replaced by leeks/brussels sprouts/french beans...)

So happy about the coffee grounds!

I’ve used copy grounds when returning my front lawn worked really well mixing it in with the aerobic soils that where originally compacted for 50 years.

I've got access to heaps of both ingredients.. What is a good ratio??

I've used wood chips for mulch. And mulched with spent coffee grounds. Never tried combining them. Thanks!

I am jelly of their used ground piles...