Our little homestead is located in central Texas, right outside of Waco, and the ground is 90% limestone and 10% clay. If any edible plants or trees are going to grow, least of all thrive, over the long term, the soil needs a total overhaul.
Wood Chips Turn Dead Soil into a Thriving Underground Ecosystem
Adding wood chips to the landscape is already showing signs of working after a year or two, but be aware that it's not a quick fix. It will continue to take years for the hard bio-matter to break down and form nutrient-rich soil. But the fruit (figuratively and literally) waiting for us after these years of waiting, will be a transformation of our rocky, clay dirt into cushy, living, thriving soil.
One encouraging thing about this waiting period is that countless hordes of organisms, from bacteria to fungi to insects, do most of the hard work for us. The Creator has already designed an automatic system of decomposition and rebirth, so that we just have sit back and let the micro-organisms "do their thing," which is to eat, multiply, and die off, a billion times over. Then, after a few years, we will have our priceless, living soil ready to feed our Ohana for years and years into the future.
We have been accumulating wood chips and spreading them around our side yard for the past 2 years, and it is fascinating to watch it all unfold.
Wood Chips Capture Precious Rainwater
Another big hurdle for growing things here in Central Texas is the yearly downpour/drought cycle. We get plenty of water averaged over the course of a year, but it all comes down at once, to the point that yearly floods are not uncommon. Then, after the floods dissipate, it won't rain again for 3-5 months over the summer. The ground dries up and large cracks form in the ground, and anything without deep roots will dry and die.
So how do we capture all this water?
Many folks here us manmade ponds (we call them "tanks" here). That makes a lot of sense for livestock purposes, but not so much for agriculture. Another possible solution that requires a lot of bulldozer work is to capture the rainwater using swales, which is a method of forcing it to pool in controlled areas long enough to penetrate deep into the ground for trees and plants to draw from year round.
Compared to these two methods, using wood chips (in my humble opinion) is a superior long term strategy for capturing rainwater because it requires no heavy machinery and serves the dual purpose of building a thriving bio-diversity underground while capturing all that water.
The cost of manually watering plants and fruit trees using traditional city or county water will become excessive at some point as well.
Wood Chips Are Free!
If you can make friends with a few arborists, there is a good chance you can get them to dump wood chips on your property for free. Maybe you can trade them for fresh eggs, sourdough bread or fire cider. Either way, you are saving them the cost of having to pay someone else to take the chips off of their hands.
It is amazing to think that such a powerhouse of stored bio-energy is available as an abundant, free natural resource that can be delivered right to your doorstep. Another person's waste byproduct can is another person's treasure.
Worst case scenario, if you have a truck and heavy duty hydraulic trailer, you can pick them up from local arborist businesses and haul them to your property.
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I could go on and on about how great wood chips are for growing food, so I should wrap this up for now. Look for more in future updates.
Until next time, Blessings to you and your Ohana.
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