What to do with sawdust in the garden. Do the same when casting lightweight vessels and moisture loving planters. The best way to prevent nitrogen loss when you use sawdust as a garden mulch is simply to add extra nitrogen with its application. Precautions when using sawdust for garden use. I generally listen to your sage advice as i perform the weekly cleaning duties in my furniture shop.
Mulch also keeps down weeds. The use of sawdust in your garden farms veggies nurseries 6 0 friday 28 april 2017 my quest to write this article was born out of desire to help farmers and gardeners mitigate challenges experience stemming from the use. Garden mulch keeps plant roots warm in the winter protects moisture from evaporating and adds nutrients to the soil. Sawdust is an eco friendly mulch that gives your garden a bright fresh look.
It often gets a bad rap for stealing nitrogen from growing plants but when used properly it can actually support the growth of your plants by helping to improve your soil. To get ready for this years gardens i tilled the. It naturally decomposes but in order to do so it needs nitrogen. If the sun cant reach the weed sprouts the weeds cant grow.
Sawdust is a great carbon source for your compost pile. I mostly work with cherry walnut and ash and currently dump the sawdust in randomly located piles in the woods behind my shop. Sawdust in moderation is good in composting. As you can imagine the shop generates a lot of sawdust.
Can it be used for anything useful in a garden way. If a good nit. Can sawdust be used in a garden. The best part is that the ratio of carbon to green materials is very high so you can really layer the sawdust into your compost pile.
Before laying the sawdust down mix 1 pound 4535 gr of actual nitrogen with every 50 pounds 225 kg of dry sawdust. It is a brown adding structure but not being particularly high in nitrogen. It worked well as i had plenty of peppers up until frost. Most deciduous trees oak beech etc break down quite quickly but conifers pine fir etc break down more slowly.
To conserve moisture on last years garden i spread sawdust around some pepper plants. Sawdust is primarily cellulose and is very high in carbon.