Using Sawdust in the Garden.... Experiment Results and the Dangers

Earlier this Spring I went to visit my local sawmill and they were willing to give me a truck load of wood chips and a separate garbage bin full of the smaller bit sized sawdust for my property. Initially I was just going to use the wood chips for my paths and walk ways as it is a great weed killer. I would take some of the finer broken down wood shavings and powder and put it in the cracks of my driveway so as to kill the weeds, works great. But then I thought what about the garden. It made sense to me to use it as a form of a mulch, so I decided to do a bit of research and see what I can do. This blog will describe my successes and my challenges with using sawdust in my garden.

This is my Goji Berry Bush, in the spring I sprinkled woodchips around the base on the container and as you can see it did not do so well, despite mixing bone meal and coffee ground in with it. More investigation into why at a later post.

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As part of my research I found this interesting Blog with an article about using sawdust written in 1947 by a farmer.
http://us.naturespath.com/blog/2009/07/10/sawdust-my-slave

So first lets talk about sawdust in general. IT IS A SLOW TO BREAK DOWN. It takes about a year to fully decompose, however clay based soils could benefit as they are a fast soil to lose their nutrients and break down. Sawdust is a mulch that drains NITROGEN from your soil, and many plants require nitrogen, so you want to avoid using it as a mulch with plants that require an abundance of Nitrogen. If you want to use sawdust with these plants, simple add a mixture of Bone Meal or coffee grounds to your sawdust to help balance the mulch.

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DANGERS
Do not use pressure treated wood shaving, chips, or sawdust as they are chemically treated and harmful to your soil. Also, you may want to avoid using Black walnut, or any walnut and cedar as it has JUGLONE a component that will stunt the growth of your plants, especially tomatoes. However if you are looking to eliminate rooted plants then this is exactly what you need. I have also determined that if you place a good portion around the base of tree trucks and shrubs it can cause rot. Lastly do not place near your home as it may attract termites. Avoid using the fine sanding powder of sawdust as it will just cake on the soil and will never really break down and cause your plants to have not drainage in the soil.

BLUEBERRIES AND STRAWBERRIES are acid loving plants that could benefit from sawdust as a mulch. Simply place 1-1.5 inches of sawdust sprinkled around the top of the soil careful not to put a heavy layer around the base.

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MY EXPERIMENT
This summer was a terribly wet summer which brought out many many slugs. Sawdust is a great way to deter slugs from your garden, so I thought I would try it on my potatoes this year, that I had planted in my raised beds. A low and behold so far I have no signs of slugs eating away at my leaves and the plants appear to be doing well. So great result. I did however make a mix of bone meal with my sawdust. If you are going to do a larger garden area of a mixture of plants, the ratio is 1 pound of Nitrogen based compound like coffee grounds or bone meal to 50 pounds of sawdust.

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Sawdust is also a great compound to grow mushrooms in. If you are willing to experiment and monitor your environment and conditions, such as temperature and humidity then it can produce some amazing results. Please see my blog post about growing mushroom from earlier this year.

Well folks there you have it, yet another experiment of sorts that I bring you my results. I plan on using the sawdust again this fall/winter to mulch my beds to get ready for Spring.

Happy Trails

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A great post

Thank you and welcome to STEEMIT

you can also make a planting medium by using charcoal husk made from rice husk that is burned, with mixed composition that is one to one. charcoal charcoal benefits can create drainage for plants, because charcoal husk can store water and its also cold. hopefully sukse always .. thanks my friend

Thank you for this information. Will research this.

I've found that if you use sawdust or wood chips in the paths, they prevent weeds, conserve moisture and also enrich the soil as they break down. We have big night crawler earthworms that burrow up and drag the sawdust down into the dirt. After a year, it's hard to tell where the wood ends and the soil begins. I then rake off what will rake and pile it, till the garden and then make new paths with the old, now composted wood chips or sawdust and plant where the old paths were. I don't have much problems with lack of nitrogen. Everything grows great. I think the earthworms take care of that problem. It seems like more work, but when you don't have to weed or till so much between the rows it works out about the same. It's kind of copying what Nature does with leaves and mats of herbaceous weeds. And the soil just keeps getting looser and darker and more friable over time.

Yup you are right. The bonus is that it is so cheap to get, mostly free resource.

Thanks for the info...never thought of using sawdust around my plants before. And I really never thought about putting it in cracks to control weeds, I normally just put a bit of vinegar in the crack and that does the trick!

Sawdust is great for growing some types of orchids...

you are right, but I don't grow them. Rhodadundrin i think

Hmmm...might try the sawdust on my strawberries next year.

why wait do it this fall.

Well, I could put it down this fall.
I'm not going to do a fall garden, but I have plants that need to be ready for the winter and I will try to setup the gardens for next spring as well.

I put sticks under my strawberry beds as an experiment last year. Not sure if that did anything.

@deanlogic good comment ... So how the 🍓 strawberries doing this year...what did you use in fertilizing..

Since I moved them around, I assume that is why they didn't do well this year. Just grew and a few tried to make berries, which the critters ate.

I only used potting and raised garden dirt.

@deanlogic
good effort...i updated a lot of posts on how to surpass these issues and ensure blossoming yield all year round.. check my posts... can make any further inquiries through questions there.. regards and wish you all the best

Never used sawdust before - great tips...I need to sweep up the garage and put them to use :)

~ Kevin

It's interesting to see what your results have been with the wood chips and sawdust. In the past, I've only used wood chips for mulch around my raspberry plants. They seem to like it, and it helps slow down the grass. I've only used hardwood chips for my raspberries, I've noticed that they don't grow as well in the woods around brush piles from pine, spruce, or other softwoods, but they really like hardwood brush piles.
I think pine wood chips would be the thing to use around blueberry bushes because I always see the best wild blueberry plants growing around stands of jack pine trees.
I should try the sawdust method for controlling the slugs, they've really been bad this year. I guess I don't have enough toads in the garden to control them.

Never really thought about hardwood vs softwood, I have only ever used pine. Thanks for sharing about your raspberries.

You know what blueberry plants like? They like old, rotted fir. Where I live a fir tree will fall, and over the years its heart turns into a crumbly red spongy material. When I've tried to dig up wild blueberries and transplant them into my garden (without much luck) I noticed that their roots will travel right down the length of the rotted tree for an amazing distance. Since then I've taken to topdressing my domestice blueberries with this stuff that I've gathered and they seem to happily respond and bear profusely. And no calcium, no bone meal, no wood ash, ever.

This post has received a 0.56 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @gardengirlcanada.

Thank you

Oh, I was just WAITING for your last paragraph, where you mentioned the mushrooms. (yes!) :-)
Also, I've been told sawdust is a good mulch around woody plants (shrubs and trees) as it's decomposed by fungi, who thrive in a slightly acidic soil, which trees love. As opposed to herbs, who prefer slightly alkaline soil, rich in bacteria, which (not surprisingly) are better at decomposing herbs.

Just be careful not to put it out too thick at the base of the tree as it will encourage rot as well.

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