Ruud Kleinpaste: Chippering away - Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

Sometimes I feel like the “Labourer” in our household.  

“Darling, can you please dig me a large hole for a Nikau Palm” followed by “pruning the fruit trees” and “covering the soil against blackbirds” or “create a nice pathway”. 

Of course I have my own stuff to do/plant/remove/mow, but once I start the Hansa Chipper I am in my element.  

Branches up to 2 inches in diameter are turned into excellent, fresh and sizeable mulch – stuff that will —in time— be the best organic matter to feed the soil and the plants that grow in situ. But it needs to be managed well.  

Couple of things you can do with this chipping monster and the chips:  

Create a thick layer of wood chips that cover the garden path. It keeps it covered in winter, and it stops a lot of weeds germinating on that path – saves a heap of weeding and keeps the surface relatively dry after winter rain.  

But if you want to create a good mulch for your plants, you’ll need to add some Nitrogen (N).  

Your chipped wood is mainly Carbon. The Nitrogen (in the form of Urea) is needed to turn the Carbon into balanced compost – a handful of Urea per square meter might do the trick.  

Many people that have a compost bin stuff that bin full of lawn clippings, fruit remains, and vegetable matter and stalks, left over from a dinner  

This compost bin is very full of Nitrogen and lacking a decent amount of Carbon —the opposite to the thick layer of wood chips— to be used as “Mulch”. 

You guessed it: this compost bin needs a good amount of Carbon from the chipper to balance the C-N ratio required for a decent plant food fertiliser in the garden  

Generally speaking, the C-N ratio required to make fertile soil should be in the order of 20-1 (up to 30-1). 

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