WORK WONDERS WITH WOODWASTES

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No matter where you live-above a subway or in the sticks-chances are you can locate a supply of woodwastes. For one thing, if any trees grow nearby, it will be a simple matter to collect leaves, rotted logs, and small branches from around the standing trunks. And if your foliage-bearing neighbors border any utility lines, the power companies will send out a tree crew once in a while complete with snarling chain saws and roaring wood chippers-who'll grind up mounds of garden helper. Such workers accumulate tons of plant shards daily and are only too glad to get rid of them.

Or you might be lucky enough to have a woodlot. If so, you can gather tree-shed humus from the forest floor . . . or buy a home-sized, mechanical shredder/chipper (Amerind Mackissic, Inc., Dept. TMEN, Box 111, Parker Ford, Pennsylvania 19457 offers its Model 12P for just over $500) that'll turn leaves, three inch branches, newspapers, straw-and more - into a fine-particled plant ally.

Heck, even if there's not a tree within 100 miles of your own sweet home, you can certainly find a woodworking shop or furniture factory that discards truckloads of shavings and would probably thank you (when you really should be grateful to them, instead) for hauling their wastes away.

SOUR WOOD

At this point, you're probably telling' yourself, "Hold on! This guy claims that chips and sawdust will solve practically all my garden problems . . . and can be found for free, besides. I don't know. It seems to me I've heard of some drawbacks to using wood wastes . . . ."

Well, I've encountered a few negative reports about tree trimming's myself, but-as far as I'm concerned-the criticisms just aren't true. One of the most common "myths", for instance, is that board bits or sawdust will put too much acid into your soil (old farmers express this belief by saying wood "sours" the ground). The truth of the matter is that the end product of tree-waste decomposition is-if anything-mildly alkaline.

Another "tall tree tale" claims that wood will make your dirt toxic. But that charge has no factual basis either. Of course, if your ground conditioner is stuck in a perpetually airless and boggy clay soil, it could produce some harmful by-products. But such a mishap would be the fault of your backyard swamp-not of the wood-and would occur with any organic garden additive.

Wood wastes don't seem to spread tree diseases, either. It's true the inner bark of some trees may possibly carry wood eating insects . . . and such critters certainly wouldn't be too good for your fruit trees. However, if you have any fears along this line, just compost the chips or sawdust for a while and the hot decay process will purify the material.

NITROGEN ROBBING

As you may have guessed by now, I think woodwastes are God's gift to gardeners. I must confess, though, that one common criticism of such soil additives does have merit: the charge that tilled-in timber bits "steal" nitrogen from the soil. You see, the bacteria that convert woodwastes to humus need this valuable plant-stimulating element . . . but soil building organisms simply can't obtain all the nitrogen they require from wood chips or (especially) from fast-decomposing sawdust, so the "mini-critters" borrow some "N" from the ground surrounding them. Of course, this process leaves less of the essential nutrient available to aid the growth of your plants.

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