What to Do With Wood Chips After Tree Work

Why chips from tree work are worth keeping

Chips straight out of a chipper are a mix of wood, bark and leaves, which is closer to what covers a forest floor than bagged bark mulch is. A good layer keeps the soil underneath cooler and damper through a hot Ottawa summer, buffers roots against temperature swings, blocks most weeds, and breaks down over a couple of years into organic matter the soil can use.

When Bisson Services chips branches on site, you can keep the mulch or have us haul it away. Our wood chipping service covers how the job works.

How to spread them

A few rules make the difference between mulch that helps and mulch that hurts:

• About 3 to 4 inches (8 to 10 cm) deep on beds and around trees. Thinner lets weeds through; much thicker can starve roots of air.
• Keep chips a few inches back from trunks and stems. A cone of mulch piled against a trunk holds moisture on the bark and invites rot and rodents.
• Lay them on top of the soil. Do not dig or till them in.
• Spread wide rather than deep: under a tree, the wider the mulched circle, the more roots it helps.
• Top up every year or two as the layer breaks down.

Where they work best, and where they don't

Chips are ideal around trees and shrubs, in perennial beds, along fence lines, and on garden paths, where a thicker layer makes a soft, clean walkway.

They are less suited to vegetable beds and annual flower beds that get dug every year. Mixed into soil, fresh wood ties up nitrogen as it breaks down and can leave young plants hungry. On top of the soil that effect stays in the thin layer where chips meet the ground, which is why surface mulch around established plants is fine. For a vegetable garden, use chips on the paths between beds.

Storing a pile

A big pile of fresh chips starts to compost and warms up inside within days. That is normal, but it is a reason to spread the chips within a few weeks and to keep a pile away from the house, a shed and any fence you care about. If the tree came down because it was diseased, ask us before spreading its chips around the same kind of tree.

Getting chips from your own trees

Most chips come out of pruning and tree removal work. Our chippers handle branches from 10 to 20 inches, so almost everything that comes down can go through them on the day. Call (613) 558-4806 for a free estimate.

Common questions

More guides