When spring has sprung, there’s nothing better than touching up your garden with fresh mulch.
Mulch does more than make your beds look good. It provides much-needed nutrients for the soil as it breaks down, and it keeps your plants safe and warm over the winter. But which type of mulch should you select? Will you go with store-bought bagged mulch? Or all-natural wood chips? In this article, we’ll break down the difference between mulch and wood chips to help you make the right choice for your garden.
What is mulch?
Mulch is usually an organic material that could include shredded bark, leaves, straw, or compost. It can also include inorganic material like gravel, rubber, or landscape fabric though, so pay close attention before you place that order. Organic mulches gradually break down to enrich the soil with nutrients, improve soil structure, and promote beneficial microbial activity.
Most garden mulches are dyed, ranging from a reddish orange all the way to dark brown, or even black depending on the stylistic choices of the gardener.
What are wood chips?
Like mulch, wood chips are made of organic matter however they are usually made up of larger, coarser pieces of wood material produced primarily through the chipping or shredding of tree branches, trunks, and limbs.
Unlike finer mulches, wood chips typically measure between 1-3 inches in size and decompose more slowly, making them excellent for long-term soil improvement and weed suppression. They are commonly created from arborists, who chip the wood from tress they take down or prune. Wood chips provide excellent pathways in garden areas, create natural-looking borders, and effectively suppress weeds while allowing water penetration to the soil beneath.
Their larger size creates beneficial air pockets that promote healthy root development and microbial activity in the soil, though they may temporarily reduce nitrogen availability in soil as they begin the decomposition process.
Mulch vs wood chips: Which is best for your garden?
There’s no clear answer to this one, as its usually subjective based on the gardener.
Mulch can be better in some cases due to its more uniform size and wider variety of colors. For a gardener with a specific vision in mind, regular garden mulch is often the preferred product.
That said, wood chips do have a few clear over storebought garden mulch:
- Due to their larger size, wood chips can last longer than mulch and need to be replaced less often as a result.
- The lack of inorganic dyes means wood chips leak fewer harmful chemicals into your soil.
- A study by Bartlett shows wood chips will pull nitrogen from the soil when they are first laid down, but provide more nutrients to the soil after as they break down.
- Due to their size and weight, wood chips are often better at preventing weed growth than mulch, which creates less of a barrier for weeds.
For these reasons, while wood chips lack the variety of color that mulch offers, they are often a more sustainable and eco-friendly solution for your garden.
Where to buy wood chips
Big box stores like Home Depot usually stock bark mulch because that’s what has the widest appeal to gardeners. That said, your local garden center may stock wood chips, as well as lumber mills which often sell them to the public. Some towns allow arborists to dump wood chips for free, so if you can find the dump site at your local recycling center, that’s a good option for free wood chips.
We’re building Woodchuck in Natick Massachusetts to connect homeowners with arborists to purchase wood chips at a discount from your standard garden center. Arborists often have to pay to dump wood chips after a job, so this provides them a free place to drop their chips while giving you high-quality, local, sustainable wood chips at up to a 90% discount of the retail price.
It’s a win-win!
Want locally sourced wood chips delivered to your door? Join the waitlist!
At the moment we are only operating in Natick Massachusetts, but we plan to expand in the coming months. You can join the waitlist (and potentially jump to the head of the line for a delivery) by filling out the form below:
