It had been about a year since I’d replenished the wood chips throughout my yard and the mulch was wearing thin. I was having trouble finding a convenient source. I started to get anxious. Then a couple weeks ago my neighbor offered a pile that had been sitting in his yard. Then Chip Drop came through with three full truck loads of cleanly chipped oak on a single day. When it rains it pours. What a blessing!
Wood chips make the best mulch in a garden. I use them under my fruit trees as well as around vegetables. Unfortunately, it can be a challenge to procure the stuff.
I’ll go through all of the sources for wood chips that I’ve used over the years and that may work for you; different ways of getting wood chips are suitable for different yards and personal situations. Lastly, I’ll talk about Chip Drop.
What are wood chips?
Let me say what I mean by “wood chips” before we go any further, as the term is not used the same everywhere. For me, wood chips are what you get when a tree trimmer puts branches through a chipper machine, a machine with powerful blades that chop the branches into bits. So, what comes out the other end, “wood chips,” are actually small pieces of everything on that branch: leaves, twigs, as well as the wood and bark of the branch.
Here’s a close up of the wood chips I just received, where you can see all of those constituents:
Five sources of wood chips for garden mulch
Once upon a time, I would go in the early morning hours and poach from piles of wood chips on the side of the road before I learned of legitimate ways to get some. What a funny phase of life that was. Here are five less sneaky, and often free, sources of wood chips that I’ve used since I became a responsible adult.
- Landfills and municipal disposal services
Tree trimmers and gardeners often take their plant waste to the landfill to dispose of it, and the landfill runs it through tub grinders and composts and screens the materials, and then offers it to local residents.
My local landfill is Miramar, in San Diego County, where San Diego City residents can get a cubic yard of wood-chip mulch for free and anyone else can get it for five dollars (totally worth the fee). Incidentally, what is listed as “wood chips” on their website is not what you want; you want what they simply refer to as “mulch.” See this link for Miramar’s mulch product.
Some other landfills in Southern California have similar offerings.
- Private landscape material suppliers
Tree trimmers and landscapers have to pay to dump their plant waste, so sometimes they dump at a closer private facility rather than the local landfill. These private operations often offer a similar wood-chip mulch as described above.
You usually have to pay for the wood-chip mulch although the fee is reasonable. Sometimes these companies will also deliver.
Examples of private suppliers that I’m familiar with are Inland Pacific in Lakeside and San Pasqual Valley Soils in Escondido.
Sorry this is so San Diego County-centric, but that’s what I know firsthand in this arena. Do a web search for “compost facility near me” or “wood chip mulch near me” and you ought to find local options.
- Nurseries and home improvement centers
Most plant nurseries and home improvement centers (like Home Depot or Lowes) don’t have wood chips available, but they do have similar materials in bags that they call mulch or bark chips.
The advantages of all of the above sources of wood chips are that you can get a little or a lot; you can get as much as you need, no more and no less.
In contrast, the sources below are great if you want a lot — like, a pile the size of a car or larger. I used to live in a place where I had a very small yard and wanted to get my mulch by filling small plastic tubs, but now I live in a place where I need large quantities and can accept a full truck load of the stuff. So these days I use the following sources.
- Tree trimmers
My ear is attuned to the sound of a chainsaw and wood chipper. When I hear them close by, I ask the guys if they’d like to drop their chips in my yard. I’ve received many loads this way.
For this to work, you need a fairly level and spacious area for the truck to back in and unload.
(Some tree trimming companies have their own yard where they drop some wood chips and will allow you to come by and take as much as you want. I did this once. Call local tree trimmers to ask.)
- Chip Drop
However, I had a long run of bad luck over the past year in getting chips dropped at my place, as I mentioned earlier, so I tried the Chip Drop service, again. Chip Drop connects gardeners like us who want arborist wood chips for mulch to tree trimmers who need to dispose of their chippings.
I had signed up for the service (which is free) a couple years ago but never got a load after months of hoping. So I took my name off their list. But I knew that Chip Drop was new to Southern California then and not yet used by many tree trimmers (or gardeners).
When I signed up again a couple weeks ago, I was surprised to receive a load only a couple days later. It felt like instant wood chips. To boot, the guys were working only two streets away and so they then returned to drop two more loads that very same day.
Chip Drop works for me now! It might work for you now, too. It all depends on whether tree trimmers in your area are signed up for it. You can see if that’s likely by looking at the map of recent drops near your address on the Chip Drop website here.
Chip Drop isn’t a good way to get a small amount of wood chips, as you can only sign up to receive a full truck load, but it’s the best way to get a lot of wood chips.
By the way, if you think a full truck load of wood chips seems like more than you can use, consider sharing with a neighbor and also know that they break down very fast. The pile starts to decompose and shrink the moment it is dropped in your yard. And if you put a layer a foot deep under a fruit tree, it will only be an inch or two thick within a year. In other words, you can probably use more than you think you can.
(Don’t forget the option of making your own wood chips. See my post, “Should you get a wood chipper?”)
You might also like to read these posts:
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Hi Greg,
Thanks I recently came across your blog and it’s very informative, thank you! I’m also in SD County, so your tips are especially useful.
I’m interested in spreading wood chips (mulch) around our fruit trees as well as use it for ground cover around a large pine tree.
But I’ve heard from neighbors that I should be leary of using wood chips, because it could contain pests from diseased trees, and I could essentially spread wood chips infected by a bark beetle or some other bad tree pest. Do you have any thoughts on that? Thank you!
Hi Jeff,
Those are common and important questions. Who wants to import diseases and pests? I’ll talk about them in my post next week, promise. For now, let me just say that to my knowledge I’ve never gotten diseases or pests from loads of wood chips, nor has anyone I know. And see this paper written by a Washington State researcher who has done a lot of studies on wood chips: http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/FS160E/FS160E.pdf
Because of your recommendations on wood chips for avocados, I got a full truck load of wood chips from a tree trimmer. It took forever, 2 weeks, to clear my driveway but my avocados are doing great and the citrus trees thanks you. My backyard looks not so good with so much woodchips around but I noticed the difference. I thank you!!!
I can totally relate! It’s quite the workout to get all those wood chips spread around the trees. I’m in the midst of doing such work right now.
Yes, it looks a little messy too, but they break down and look prettier surprisingly fast.
Hi Greg – does it matter what kind of trees they mulch? For example, there are a lot of eucalyptus trees that get chipped in my neighborhood but I thought they were pretty toxic for most plants.
Hi Lindsay,
The only wood chips that I sometimes avoid are thorny stuff. One time I took a load with a lot of thorny citrus rootstock in it and that was no fun to walk on. It broke down eventually though.
I take everything else, including eucalyptus. I’ve taken a lot of eucalyptus and have never had a problem with it. I also love the way it smells as it decomposes.
Here’s a study done by University of California researchers in Southern California using eucalyptus mulch: http://slosson.ucdavis.edu/newsletters/Downer_199429100.pdf
Part of the study’s summary reads: “Fresh eucalyptus is an excellent mulch for woody landscape plant materials . . .”
Thanks! This is by far the best resource I’ve come across for insight on growing avocados. Much appreciated!
Hello Greg, I recently came across your blog and I am loving it. My garden has improved so much. For seeds, how deeply should you mulch? I just sowed some lettuce in my garden, if that helps. Will the mulch block the plant growth, either by obstructing sunlight, or pushing down on a sprout? Thanks.
Hi Shalom,
I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying the blog.
I’m going to write a post about using mulch in the vegetable garden in the next couple weeks. You must move the mulch to the side when sowing seeds, especially tiny ones like lettuce. They won’t germinate if covered more than a little bit.
I’ll post a photo on my Instagram account (theyardposts) of a sowing of corn that I made in a mulched bed a week and a half ago.
Thanks, I saw the photo. Now I just need to find where I actually sowed the lettuce…
I love your writing! thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I live in Woodland, Ca in a small house with an average backyard. Was wondering if you had ever used cardboard under woodchips before?…. to get rid of weeds?
Hi Alejandro,
Thanks! You live in a great area. Do you ever listen to the Davis Garden Show? I love that show.
I’ve only used cardboard under wood chips in a very small way so I don’t feel like I have a good deal of experience to draw from on that topic. In terms of its effect on getting rid of weeds, I can say that it does help with many weeds as long as the wood chips on top are thick enough. I’d go at least six inches, but up near a foot is even better.
This isn’t perfectly effective on perennial weeds like Bermuda grass though in my experience because it often exploits thin spots or emerges on the edges of the mulched area. But it is somewhat effective.
I just signed up for Chip Drop, and Im hoping to get my first load! The clisest location from me, recently serviced, was 50 miles away. Fingers crossed!
Great tip on chip drop, Greg! Thinking to apply chips on my rocky slope, with hopes of keeping soil in place and improving it. Any thoughts?
-Doug
Good idea, Doug. I would also grow something on the slope. Plants keep the soil in place even better than wood chips.