| "Q. My husband loves flower beds but he has no luck growing much of anything. I tell him nothing grows in wood mulch. When he trims bushes or branches, he runs them through the mulcher and puts it in the flower beds or around trees. The trees seem to tolerate it but not the flowers. Even the hollyhocks have almost died each year. Can you write about how to use wood mulch?" "A. Wood chips and small wood particles do not make a good mulch material for any herbaceous material with any soft tissue plants like vegetables, annuals and perennials for several reasons." "One is that they usually end up with some type of decaying fungus that will try to help the cellulose start the decaying process. Unfortunately, many of the fungi involved in this process will kill 90 percent of seedlings and young plants. The fungi are usually related to the genera Pythium and Rhizoctonia, both commonly known as damping-off." "These two diseases take off anytime there is any high humidity or excessive moisture in the soil. They are also present in almost every type of soil in our area. Once these diseases become active, most plants that do not have a dead bark covering over their stems become infected and these diseases then kill the plants very easily and quickly." "Second, all wood materials will absorb and pull any nitrogen from the soil, and from any living nearby plant tissues to help with this decaying process. By this loss of nitrogen, the living plant tissues are weakened and become susceptible to other plant diseases and they die quickly. They may live a little longer depending upon their larger size, but they will die in time." "Your husband missed this first part about decay. After the wood material has decayed sufficiently, it makes an excellent mulch or soil additive. But it must completely decay before being added to the flower beds or to the vegetable garden." "If he would compost the chips for one complete growing season and add nitrogen to speed up the decay process, the compost process should be complete. He would need to add 6 inches of wood material and then cover it with 2 inches of manure or green
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