I started to create a wood chip path in my backyard garden. I had been planning to do this for awhile. I had been ruminating on this for some time, and had an idea of how I would go about making it and figured I would adjust as I went. I didn’t want the path to be a dark brown or black in color and wanted the most inexpensive wood chips I could get, so I settled on red instead of a more expensive natural colored chip. This wasn’t about improving or building soil, it was about a walking surface so the decorative effect of the red was fine with me.
I first spent quite a bit of time digging into the soil to lower the level of the ground so the wood chips would have a sort of “holding place” to sit in. I planned to surround them by a physical border for the planting beds so they wouldn’t get all over the place if it was windy or my dogs ran around on them and kicked them up into the surrounding areas.
I started off by placing newspaper down because in my experience, it’s the coverage of newspaper, or cardboard, or fabric (which personally, I would never use) that really stops the weeds from coming through. The wood chips are almost like a decorative effect and safety net for the true weedblock, which is the paper underneath them.
I had forgotten how much I hate using newspaper in my garden until I started this project. If there is the slightest bit of wind while you are handling and laying the newspaper down over the soil, it blows around. Either one end blows up in the air or whole pieces are easily blown all the way across the garden. The only way to prevent that is to quickly soak the newspaper with your hose, or a watering can after you lay the sheets on the ground. After, I had fought with the newspaper and got it into generally the area I wanted it, I put the border of bricks in the approximate place they were going to go. As level as I could manage. I also would attempt to fit the edges of the newspaper under the bricks to help hold it into place.
Finally it was time to actually put down the wood chips. Those bags are 2 cubic feet each. They are large and heavy and after a while I found the easiest thing to do is to empty the bag into my cart first and then either use a shovel to toss the chips on top of the paper, or what I eventually did, was to just dump the cart right into the area where the chips would be and spread them out with a rake or by hand.
The black plastic edging along the bottom of the wood chips will be filled with soil and have grass seed planted in it. That didn’t bother me. But something about this was and still is bothering me. I’m not sure what it is. It may just be the emptiness on either side of this path in progress.
The darker red chips toward the top of the photo above shows how the chips look as soon as they come out of the bag. The bag seems to keep in moisture. Once they dry out some, the color is more muted as you can see in the chips towards the bottom of the photo.
Just this little area took more time than I expected it would. As is usually the case. And, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really don’t like wood chips or using newspaper in my garden. Everything is just a little too unwieldy for my taste. I’ll live with it for a few days and see if I change my mind.
Update: I decided to keep going with the wood chips and would build out the wood chip pathway all around the outside of the garden