📌 Quick Summary: Wood Shavings & Nitrogen Tie-Up
- 🍓 Why Mulch Strawberries? Mulching suppresses weeds and keeps the berries clean by lifting them off the dirt, preventing rot in wet weather.
- 🌲 The Nitrogen Myth: Fresh wood shavings or sawdust will pull nitrogen out of the soil as they break down. To prevent this, you must soak fresh shavings in a Nitrogen fertilizer (like Urea) before applying them.
- 🐔 The Deep Litter Hack: If you use soiled wood shavings straight from a chicken coop, you don’t need to add fertilizer! The chicken manure is so high in nitrogen that it perfectly balances the carbon in the wood, feeding the plants while mulching them.
- ❄️ Spring Warning: Don’t apply thick mulch too early in the spring! Mulch acts as insulation and will prevent the sun from warming up the cold soil, delaying plant growth.
Yesterday I mulched all my strawberry beds with soiled wood shavings from the chicken coop. We bagged it up over the winter when we were cleaning out the deep litter.In the fall, I mulched them with shredded garden flowers run through a wood chipper. It kept the weeds away, but the earthworms ate almost all of it! So now I am using wood shavings. It means I won’t have to weed this summer, and the berries will sit clean on top of the shavings. By fall, I’ll switch back to grass/flower mulch.
And of course, look at the weather’s little gift today… hello winter, we missed you so much (not). I have a space heater running in the greenhouse right now, and all the tomatoes (both planted and unplanted ones sitting on the center bed) are covered with frost blankets. The heater is on medium, keeping it at 41°F (+5°C), but I just went out and turned it up higher.
Everything is covered in snow here too! It is freezing cold, and the snow just keeps coming down. And to think the weather was so beautiful just last evening.I prepped a bed for early cabbage and broccoli, I was planning to plant them tomorrow or the day after. Inside my greenhouses, everything is completely bundled up. Every single bed is covered in three layers of frost blanket, and I even taped all the door and vent cracks shut with duct tape! The only good thing is that yesterday was very sunny, so the soil and the plants managed to warm up nicely before this cold snap hit. I’m just hoping for the best.
Aleksan9ra (Ludmila) wrote:
Anya, why are your strawberry plants spaced so far apart from each other?
It seems normal to me! I plant most of them 12–14 inches (30-35 cm) apart. But the variety in the close-up photo is ‘Chamora Turusi’, and I space those 20 inches (50 cm) apart, exactly as recommended. That variety grows into absolutely massive bushes.
Also, these are just last year’s runners, so the plants are still very small. When the strawberries fully grow in, it turns into a jungle, and the berries start to rot. My property sits in a low-lying area, so it stays very damp.
Ludmila, I have a flower bed full of phlox, chrysanthemums, and peonies running alongside the house. The sprouts were already quite big. The peonies don’t care about the cold, but I’m terrified the heavy, wet packed snow sliding off the roof just crushed my phlox and chrysanthemums. 😥 It is an absolute nightmare outside right now, it just won’t stop. First we are going to drown, then everything will snap from the weight of the snow.
Russi (Anna) wrote:
So now I am using wood shavings. It means I won’t have to weed this summer…
Don’t the shavings steal Nitrogen from the soil? Or do you do this every year without issue? Are they fresh shavings? Or did you water them with chicken manure tea afterward?
Tatunya (Tanya) wrote:
Don’t the shavings steal Nitrogen from the soil?
To prevent wood shavings/sawdust from stealing Nitrogen when mulching strawberries or raspberries, you have to soak them in a Urea solution first: 2 tablespoons of Urea per 2.6 gallons (10L) of water. I think the longer you let them soak, the better, and then you apply them as mulch.
The wood swells up, absorbs the nitrogen from the water, and therefore doesn’t pull it out of the soil away from the plants.
BUT, since Anna is using soiled shavings straight from her chicken coop deep litter, they are probably already completely saturated with nitrogen, so she doesn’t need to add Urea at all!
Russi (Anna) wrote:
Yesterday I mulched all my strawberry beds…
Two years ago, I mulched my beds with wood shavings in early spring. It caused the plants to wake up and start growing much later than usual. Now, I never apply shavings or heavy mulch until June, after the garden soil has fully warmed up in the sun!
Tatunya (Tanya) wrote:
Don’t the shavings steal Nitrogen from the soil? Or do you do this every year without issue?
Tanya, nothing gets stolen from my soil, my plants just explode with growth from the chicken manure… which is pure nitrogen!
These are the wood shavings from the floor of the chicken coop. When the chickens soil them completely, we rake them out and put down clean ones. I’ve been using this soiled litter to mulch everything for 5 or 6 years now, especially my roses, strawberries, and conifers. Everything thrives. I try to put the mulch down right before a heavy rain so it washes the raw guano down into the soil, leaving just the clean wood shavings sitting on top.
👨🔬 Editor’s Botanical Note: The Nitrogen Tie-Up Myth
This thread brilliantly debunks the most common fear in gardening: “Wood chips will rob my soil of Nitrogen!”
Here is the science: When fresh, uncomposted wood shavings or sawdust break down, the bacteria doing the decomposition require Nitrogen to do their job. If there isn’t enough Nitrogen in the wood, they pull it from the surrounding soil. This is called Nitrogen Tie-Up.
However, as Anna and Ludmila correctly point out, this only happens if the wood is “clean.” Because Anna uses “Deep Litter” (wood shavings completely soaked in raw, Nitrogen-heavy chicken manure), the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio is already perfectly balanced. The bacteria have all the Nitrogen they need to break down the wood, so they don’t steal a drop from the strawberry plants!
Also, Tamara brings up a crucial point for cold-climate gardeners: Don’t mulch too early! Mulch acts as a thermal blanket. If you put it over cold, freezing soil in early spring, it blocks the sun from heating the dirt, which severely stunts your plants’ early growth!
