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Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:01)
So welcome to Ben Raskin, Head of Agroforestry at the Soil Association, author and absolute champion of sustainable growing. Welcome.
Ben Raskin (00:14)
Hi Jane, thanks so much for having me on.
Jane Westoby (00:17)
That's okay. So I contacted you because someone on another podcast actually mentioned your name and I'd not heard of you. So I was, while I was on the podcast, I was literally Googling who's this person and got very intrigued. And then she started talking about woodchip and I got even more intrigued and thought, I think we need to have a podcast about woodchip and find out. Cause I do use woodchip here.
on my garden and in my land and I absolutely love it, absolutely love it. It should be great to hear more about it from you and what I can do with it and what other people can do with it. I think it's underrated, isn't it?
Ben Raskin (01:02)
It is underrated and it's something that when I was writing the book, people would either go, oh, that's a bit niche or they'd go, yes, I love it. And it is amazing, I think, how many people have used it a bit and liked it, but not realized quite how useful it can be. think it's better.
Jane Westoby (01:21)
Yeah,
it's full potential. Okay, so to start with, because we've got some beginners who listen to the podcast, maybe beginner gardeners, and we've got more advanced as well, but what exactly is woodchip just for anyone who is confused? And because I think it's so obvious that we don't want to presume that everyone actually really knows. So what is it?
Ben Raskin (01:45)
Well, I mean, again, at the risk of sounding really stupid, is chipped wood. It is trees that have been chipped or shredded. And it's a relatively new material. So it really was invented at the end of the 19th century, the wood chipper. So it's only been around for, what, 140 years or so. was invented in Germany as a way of dealing with the stuff that was coming out of their municipal parks. And so we've...
Jane Westoby (01:53)
Hmm.
Ben Raskin (02:15)
For a lot of time it was a waste product in a way and people just saw it as well We've to get rid of this wood somehow and it takes up less space if we chip it And then people realized that it was quite good on paths And and then it sort of more recently people have been finding other uses but I mean I create wood chip in my garden by with a pair of secateurs just cutting up the branches as I'm cutting them and leaving them on the floor because I don't want to burn them or
Jane Westoby (02:29)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Raskin (02:44)
or pay to get rid of them. So you can sort of create woodchip in a way with anything. But obviously, as soon as you have any volume, that doesn't really work. So you need a bigger...
Jane Westoby (02:54)
No, it's hard going on the hands, isn't it? Yeah,
yeah, okay. So, I mean, is it, I mean, I've bought bark chip in bags before, before I had the easy access to wood chip, but I'm not even sure if you can get it in bags and it would be quite expensive as well, wouldn't it, in bags? Can you?
Ben Raskin (03:15)
You can actually start, you can now. Yeah,
I did quite a lot of research when I was writing the book about how to get hold of it. And there are people now selling, you know, 40 litre bags, tonne bags. So you can get it, you're right. It's quite expensive buying it in small quantities. And much as I love it, if I'm honest, I'm not convinced it would justify the cost of buying it in small bags.
Jane Westoby (03:33)
Mm.
Yeah.
Ben Raskin (03:42)
Although, you know, it might do.
Jane Westoby (03:46)
Miss, I suppose
if you only need a really small amount because you've got a small maybe town garden. Maybe.
Ben Raskin (03:49)
Yeah, or if you've
got a roof garden or difficult access where you can't get bigger quantities delivered, then yes, it probably is worth it, but it does get expensive.
Jane Westoby (04:03)
Yeah, yeah. So we've had a lot of trees felled here and my, the chap that came down to fell them had the wood chipper and he said he was going to take all the wood chip away. And I said, no, can you leave the wood chip on the drive, please? And he said, no, no, you, what, what do want that for? And I paths and this and that and the other compost, you know, no, it's rubbish. You don't, you don't want that. And he said to me, do. You're leaving that wood chip. I'm paying you. You're leaving that wood chip behind because it is really useful. Yeah.
Ben Raskin (04:25)
Yeah. And do
think he really thought it was useless or do you think he was good? Because I had a habit at one stage of running after tree surgeons in the village I lived in. One of them said, no, no, we take that away and compost it and sell it back to our customers.
Jane Westoby (04:44)
Yeah, I'm actually not sure. I don't
know whether he wanted it himself or whether he was being genuine. But he has been back a few times since and he knows he needs to leave us the woodchip. So there's a lot of debate about fresh woodchip and aged woodchip. So what's your take on that?
Ben Raskin (05:07)
Well, so
it depends a little bit on the wood chip and on how you're going to use it. So I'd say broadly, there's sort of three different types of wood chip. There's the bark that you mentioned earlier, which obviously is just the outer bit. And that tends to come from the forestry supply chain, as it were. So where timber is milled, they strip the bark off it, and that then becomes a byproduct, which is chipped.
sometimes made into compost. So Melcortes, for instance, sort of came out of that industry. And it's fine as a material. And again, it's fine as a mulch for paths or for shrubs. It tends to be quite dry and it's not got a lot of the minerals that Younglewood has. So comes from big old trees and it's just the bark. Then you've got
Mixed wood chip, which is typically what you would get from a tree surgeon if they were giving you some and that could be anything. It could be a big old tree that they felled, it could be trimmings from a landy or hedges. So it's a real mix of stuff. And then there's what's called Remuel wood chip, which is the chip that comes from branches that are less than seven centimeters in diameter is the official definition, but it's the small.
Jane Westoby (06:20)
Mm.
Wow, okay.
Ben Raskin (06:32)
basically, which would be most of the stuff that we'd be getting out of gardens where you're, you know, you're pruning shrubs and small trees. and, and that can be used fresh. So because it's got a much higher proportion of bark to corewood, to, to heartwood, and the bark is where all the nutrients are. that's where a lot of the minerals, nutrients, amino acids, that's something they're all in the bark. the young bark.
And so the more you have of that as a proportion of your material, the more likely you are to be able to use it fresh. There is a risk, it's not a very big risk I've discovered, and I think it's overplayed, but there is a risk of locking up nitrogen when you use woodchip. So because even in Raymool woodchip, there's quite a lot of carbon, trees are mostly carbon.
Jane Westoby (07:07)
Okay.
Yeah.
Ben Raskin (07:29)
To break that down, the fungi, and it's predominantly fungi that breaks it down because bacteria finds it hard to get into the lignin, the of the tough woody structure initially. So fungi does a lot of the work. Although it doesn't need that much nitrogen, it does need some nitrogen to work. And if it can't find it, it goes off looking for it in the soil. So that's where this idea of nitrogen lockup or nitrogen robbing comes from.
Jane Westoby (07:53)
Mmm.
Ben Raskin (07:55)
is the the fungi scavenges around looking for bit of nitrogen to be able to function. And if it can't find it in the wood then it takes it from the soil. So the lower the proportion of carbon within that mix the less the risk of robbing is.
Jane Westoby (08:11)
Okay, so that's a really good point. Yeah, absolutely.
So how does the wood chip actually impact kind of soil structure in that microbial life?
Ben Raskin (08:27)
So there's a few ways. the most obvious, and I mentioned fungi already, but the most obvious is it supports fungi. And fungi generally, not all of them, but most fungi like wood and have evolved to live off wood and decaying wood. And typically, our cultivated soils are quite low in fungi because fungi doesn't like being disturbed.
It doesn't like every time we dig or, you know, I'm more from a commercial end, so ploughing and cultivating, but, even just sticking a fork in the soil and turning it over will destroy fungal hyphes and make the soil less attractive to fungi. So if you really want fungi in your soil, then don't disturb it. Leave it as much as possible.
Jane Westoby (09:19)
Don't touch it. Wow. That's a real advert for being a bit of a lazy gardener, isn't it?
Ben Raskin (09:26)
When I started, I've been in horticulture for about 30 years, and when I started, there was still people advocating double dig gardening. And I worked in one garden where I had to double dig a patch. And even then, didn't really understand that much about soil health at that point, but even I could see that this was such a waste of time and effort. mean, it's actually destroying the structure of the soil. So anyway, yeah, luckily we've moved.
Jane Westoby (09:40)
Hi.
Yeah
Yeah, I
think kind of 20 years ago when I first started gardening, I think I double dug maybe once or twice and just thought, this is hard work. Can't I just be a lazy gardener? And I started literally just not bothering and just putting compost down, not even realizing that this would be a thing in the future. I kept it secret. I didn't tell anybody that I wasn't digging. I literally kept it all to myself.
Ben Raskin (10:02)
When is last time?
Thank
That's
funny.
Jane Westoby (10:19)
Now,
if I'd have advertised about it and actually done a bit of research and maybe done some trials, you never know. I could have been the John Dowding of, yeah, sorry, Charles Dowding. Yeah, it could have been a very different world. Yeah, I wish I wouldn't have kept it such a secret now. That's what I was doing.
Ben Raskin (10:27)
You could have been...
Yeah.
So yeah,
we go back to your original question. So that's the sort of the fungi bit. And in a way, in a forest situation, a natural situation, what would tend to happen is branches would fall off a tree and they would very slowly rot down and the fungi would gradually rot them down and incorporate them. What we're doing when we chip it is we're speeding up that process. So we're sort of fast tracking in a way and giving, it's like...
It's like fast food for fungi in a way, sort of wood chips. So you're making it very easily accessible. typically fungi find it much easier, well, any organisms find it much easier to get. So they struggle to get.
Jane Westoby (11:30)
yeah, errrr, why is your recording stopped? Is there a button that you can press?
Ahem!
Rebecca on, yeah, that's fine. It's still recording from my side. So yeah, don't worry. I'll cut all of that out. That's fine.
Soul structure and microbial life, yes.
Ben Raskin (12:21)
The fungi and other organisms find it much easier to access the wood and get into it from a cut end. They struggle to get in through the bark.
So that typically a log would break down more quickly at each end than it would through the side. And obviously when we're making wood chip, we're making cut ends everywhere. So these small bits of wood are very easy for the fungi to break down. And then that carbon is getting incorporated into the soil. So once the fungi start to break it down, they then make it accessible for all the other organisms like the bacteria and nematodes and all that sort of thing to start breaking the organic material down further.
And then it encourages earthworms and all the rest it. So there's evidence and studies documenting increased earthworm activity when you have woodchip in the soil. So you're building your soil health, your soil organic matter, and therefore your soil structure. And it's a boost to do that in a way. it's not, you're not particularly adding fertility to the soil, but you are adding organic matter and therefore boosting your soil biology, which makes
what minerals there are in your soil more accessible to your plants. the more organic matter you've got in your soil and obviously it depends on your soil how much you can have, so do behave differently but generally the more organic matter you've got the more sponge like your soil becomes so the more moisture it's able to hold on to.
Jane Westoby (13:34)
Okay, that makes absolute sense. But it can also help with water retention as well and that kind of drought resilience.
Ben Raskin (13:58)
But also conversely, the better it drains when it's wet. So you get this resilience at both ends of the spectrum, the wet and the dry. And the other thing, once you start building up things like earthworm populations, they also create this sticky mucus that comes out when they digest the soil. And that helps form crumbs within the soil and builds that structure.
So the rain will fall through it, but you'll hold onto your nutrients and moisture more within that. So is it something you'd recommend then for maybe clay soil? I don't have clay here, but absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. I mean, it's good for pretty much any soil. I would say it will. It will improve the structure in clay soils and it definitely builds your ability to hold on to nutrients in lighter soils.
Jane Westoby (14:31)
Okay, so is it something you'd recommend then for maybe clay soil? I don't have clay here, but would it be good for clay?
Ben Raskin (14:54)
and will particularly in the hot dry periods that we seem to be getting occasionally now, it would definitely reduce your... so typically, mean looking at the studies, also the studies on organic matter but there's also studies on using it as a mulch and I would generally not dig it in, I would generally put it on the top and allow the soil organisms to break it down and bring it down into your soil.
Jane Westoby (15:02)
Yeah.
Okay.
Ben Raskin (15:21)
but typically
using it as a mulch you'll reduce your watering needs by about 25%. So it is significant. Yeah. Exactly.
Jane Westoby (15:28)
wow, and I think in a year when it's really hot, that's a considerable amount knowing, and I've hand watered
my flower pots many a time, and if I could have saved 25 % of that time, wow, that would have been great. Are there any particular types of wood which are best or worst for soil health?
Ben Raskin (15:44)
Are there any particular types of wood which are best or worst for soil health? Well,
there's not enough research done actually and one of the things, so there's quite a lot of general research done with woodchip, more than I thought actually when I was researching for the book. It's like, wow, there's actually quite a lot out there but nobody had really pulled it together. But there's very little on single species woodchips and specifics.
types. there's, did a bit of the soil association around willow. We did a, we run this program called the innovative farmers program, which is about bringing farmers and researchers together to do trials on their farms. And we did one looking at using willow on apple trees. So willow is full of salicylic acid, which is aspirin, basically. And there's some evidence that
that salicylic acid can stimulate immune reactions in plants. So makes them better able to fight disease in the same way that it does with us actually. And so we wanted to try in a sort of commercial cider orchards whether if you put a willow wood chip mulch around them, whether that helped with scab. And there was some indication that it might, it wasn't very conclusive, more trials needed.
Jane Westoby (17:08)
Okay, more trials needed then.
Ben Raskin (17:11)
The then it's again, is this particular one. So salicylic acid is quite, what's the word? It dissolves very easily in water. So it doesn't, it's quite leachable. So you have to get the timing right. So have to cut the willow in February when the sap's rising, because that's when the salicylic acid is in the sap. And you then have to use it within a couple of weeks as a mulch so that it's leached out.
Jane Westoby (17:25)
Okay.
Ben Raskin (17:37)
as the trees growing and so some of the growers didn't quite use enough and then we're not sure if the timing was quite right. there's some stuff like that. difficult to control. Exactly. But so anyway, that's one example with the willow. But generally, we don't know very much about how particular types, we know a little bit about the difference I said earlier between raymule and between sort of heartwood. But in terms of individual species, I think there's a lot of
Jane Westoby (17:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's quite difficult to control, I guess, as well. Yeah, okay.
Ben Raskin (18:06)
Because every tree is different and has particular makeup. it's It really is isn't it? Yeah
Jane Westoby (18:11)
Yeah, that's calling out for a research program, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the environmental benefits, I mean, they are
huge. How do you think that woodchip fits into the kind of the overall regenerative gardening model?
Ben Raskin (18:34)
Well,
mean I Our gardens produce Stuff all the time and we're I think we've most people now are getting quite good at composting and understanding You know that compost is useful but I think we find it probably a bit harder to To work out how we cope with that bigger stuff
And I think partly there's a practical consideration of how we create the trip. And as we said earlier, you can't actually do it all with a pair of secateurs. But equally, not everybody wants to have a chipper sitting in their garage. And actually the small chippers, I have a little tiny garden chipper and it's pretty useless really. It will shred up some of the smaller stuff, but it takes forever and it's really noisy.
Jane Westoby (19:11)
Mmm.
Ben Raskin (19:25)
And it's not, you know, it's not the most thing. Exactly. Yeah. And what you know, what I tend to recommend is that you hire in a high powered chipper. But of course, that means you've got to hang on to the stuff so that you've got enough to make it worthwhile in one go. And if you've got, you know, my garden at home, I don't have any space for the piles of
Jane Westoby (19:25)
Yeah, it's hard going. It is hard work and they do block up. Mine blocks up all the time. I spend more time on blocking it than what I do chipping. Yeah.
Ben Raskin (19:53)
dead wood waiting, you know, it's fine if you're on a farm and you've got a corner of a field, you can stick it all. But in a home garden situation, it is a bit tricky. So, so there's there's various options. One is looking at community composting and wood chipping arrangements. And, you know, getting together with a group or if you happen to have a little bit more land, hosting a community one where people can bring their woody material and then you say chip it maybe once or twice a year.
and then people get the wood chip back. And the other is actually just trying to get hold of tree surgeons and get them to give you the wood chip and you putting yours into the municipal system. So it's not always straightforward, but I would say if you can, basically all of this wood that's growing in your garden, woody stuff that's growing in your garden is your fertility. It's capturing sunlight, it's taking minerals from your soil.
Jane Westoby (20:32)
Mmm.
Ben Raskin (20:51)
And if you then lose it from your system, effectively you're losing a free resource. So if you can find a way of turning that really useful material into a form that you can use it, then your whole system is becoming more self-sustaining. And certainly, I would encourage anyone with a bigger garden or whether it's a market garden or just a bigger home garden to try and...
Jane Westoby (20:59)
Yeah.
Ben Raskin (21:16)
find ways to grow their own woodchip and manage their own woodchip because it's such a fantastic resource and effectively you know apart from a bit of cost of a woodchipper or time it's effectively free and suited to your garden. Are there any things to avoid or mistakes people make when they use woodchip in their gardens? Well so just going back to this sort nitrogen robbing idea there are you can
Jane Westoby (21:33)
Yeah. Are there any things to avoid or mistakes people make when they use woodchip in their gardens, do you think?
Ben Raskin (21:46)
run into problems in a couple of situations. So mostly, as long as you're not digging in, then you'll probably be fine. But I would say that if you're growing very shallow rooted plants, so whether that's little seedlings or I've run into trouble with raspberries, for instance, where the, you know, it's all very shallow rooted and they don't go down deep.
Typically the nitrogen robbing happens within one centimeter of where the wood hits the soil. So if it's all on the top of the soil, basically it's only that top centimeter or two of the soil that's going to be affected. So if you're mulching shrubs or anything that goes down deep, then you're fine. And I haven't seen any negative effects at all. established garden borders, it's great for Absolutely. Yeah. And you can put fresh, even big lumpy chunks of fresh wood chips.
Jane Westoby (22:37)
So established garden borders, it's great for essentially.
Ben Raskin (22:45)
the surface and that's fine. you've got things like raspberries or you're using it in vegetable growing or where you've got little you know newly planted seedlings or plants then I would recommend composting it first. Absolutely, yeah so there's two ways of mitigating against this nitrogen-robbing risk. One is to add
Jane Westoby (23:01)
Okay, so that was going to be our next question. Should people actually put it in their compost heaps?
Ben Raskin (23:14)
something with nitrogen to it. So that could be compost, could be manure, grass clippings or even something like seaweed liquid or something. So you know can add a nitrogen source to it, it'll hold on to it. And actually there's a lot of evidence that adding wood chip to high nitrogen materials is a really good way of conserving that nitrogen. farmers for instance have been adding it to their manure and it leaches less than straw manure.
Jane Westoby (23:19)
your grass clippings, yeah.
Ben Raskin (23:43)
So it's really good to add it in with your compost and that will also speed up the decomposition of it a little bit. So if you've got access to a bit of manure or compost or grass clippings, definitely mix it in. But actually even just left on its own, it will rot down over 12, 18 months. So you can just leave it in a bag in the corner of your garden. then, you know, it's surprising because people go, oh no, it needs nitrogen, it needs this and that. And actually it seems to...
be fine and rot down.
Jane Westoby (24:15)
Yeah, okay.
Ben Raskin (24:18)
So if someone wants to start using Woodchip but they do feel a little bit overwhelmed, what's kind of the simplest way to begin or what are maybe the three areas which should be using it? So, I mean, clearly paths is great, but I definitely am an advocate for more than Paths. But there's no risk basically using on paths because you're not, you know, it's only going to do a good thing.
Jane Westoby (24:19)
So if someone wants to start using woodchip but they do feel a little bit overwhelmed, what's kind of the simplest way to begin or what are the maybe the three areas that they should be using it?
Ben Raskin (24:47)
I would say the second easiest is around trees and shrubs. And I certainly, that's how I sort of really got into it in a way was through the tree planting I do. So as well as the work I do at the Soil Association, I'm manager, the agroforestry and tree planting at a farm just near Swindon. And we've been planting thousands of trees and the more we mulch them, the better they do.
So I now put a 25 centimeter deep mulch, if I can, around every tree I plant. That's deep! It is deep. It's real deep. Yeah, but that saves me going back and doing it twice. So the idea, so I it once really heavily when I plant it, that lasts hopefully for two years, by which time the tree's got away. And even in dry years, we see very few losses at that depth.
Jane Westoby (25:21)
Wow, that's deep. That's real deep.
Okay.
Ben Raskin (25:43)
And there was a bit of a eureka moment, which there's a picture of it in the book where we, did an accidental experiment. We pollarded a whole load of willow trees and had a massive pile of mulch that we threw over the fence around some trees. And I was supposed to move it around and mulch some other trees. And of course never got around to it. So it just stayed there. This was 2017, 2018. We had that really hot, dry spring and early summer in 2018, three months basically without rain.
And in this particular, it was a woodland we'd create and we planted from memory, sort of five, six thousand plants. And we lost probably 40 or 50 % of them in that summer. But this corner that had the wood chip, not only did they survive, but they grew unbelievably. So within three years, they were 15, 16 feet tall. Whereas the trees next to them that didn't have any wood chip were still only at my waist.
Jane Westoby (26:27)
Wow.
Ben Raskin (26:42)
And I just thought wow, how did that happen? Clearly two and a half foot deep of woodchip is not practical. Well, think it might be for some tree species. mean willow obviously can cope with being moist. So a lot of trees you wouldn't, you don't want to mulch right up to the bark because you can get a bit of disease if you keep the bark really wet. But obviously willow doesn't care about that.
Jane Westoby (26:47)
Yeah.
It's not a bad thing, but it's not a bad thing either.
You
Ben Raskin (27:12)
So I wouldn't particularly recommend two and a half feet of mulch, but it was really interesting that in this case it had such a striking effect. And that's what really made me think, okay, we need to go deeper. And if you look at the literature, the evidence says you need 10 to 15 centimeters of mulch to get a decent weed control and moisture retention, or to get any effect on weed control and moisture retention.
Jane Westoby (27:22)
Yeah.
Ben Raskin (27:38)
But what I found putting on at 10 to 15 centimeters, it disappears at the end of the year. And then often the trees aren't quite established enough. And we can't afford to go back and mulch twice. You when you're doing thousands of trees, you've got to get it right and walk away in a way, ideally. And so I'd rather do it once if I can, but do it really heavily and then they're sorted. It's the idea.
Jane Westoby (27:46)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Yeah, okay,
Ben Raskin (28:08)
Okay, that sounds fabulous. we've mentioned a few ways of getting hold of woodchip, but I think it's probably worth going over that again in terms of how can people get hold of woodchip.
Jane Westoby (28:08)
yeah, okay, that sounds fabulous. we've mentioned a few ways of getting hold of woodchip, but I think it's probably worth going over that again in terms of how can people get hold of woodchip.
Ben Raskin (28:23)
So the cheapest way, if you can, is to get it from tree surgeons. So at the moment, unless trees make friends with a tree surgeon, unless the tree surgeons, as I say, have cottoned onto it and are hanging onto it.
Jane Westoby (28:31)
make friends with a tree surgeon.
Ben Raskin (28:37)
At the moment they still have to pay to get rid of it. So if they take it to a recycling center, they have to pay a gate fee to get rid of it. there is a website called Arbtalk where you can register yourself as what's called a tip site. And then if any tree surgeons are in your area and they want to get rid of a load, then they can. You do have to be accessible and have an area that they can tip it off.
Jane Westoby (28:45)
Yeah.
Ben Raskin (29:05)
their van so it doesn't work for everybody. the link to that in the show notes in the house if anyone wants to go on. So that's definitely an option. I have heard that in certain parts of the country it's getting harder to get free woodchip, so in the Midlands apparently it's really hard to get free woodchip and again speaking to people sort of in the Scottish Highlands where the nearest tree surgeon is 50 miles away you know that's not an option. it's not that doesn't work for everybody but
Jane Westoby (29:07)
Yeah, yeah. And I'll pop the link to that in the show notes as well. So if anyone wants to go onto there, then they can do.
okay.
Mmm, yeah.
Ben Raskin (29:31)
I mean, we're lucky at the farmer where we've got actually three tree surgeons, think two of them live in sort of villages nearby and we've got a nice concrete pad that they can come and dump. So we get quite a lot of free woodchips still at the moment. a lot of allotments get free woodchip as well. So I've been a member of a couple of allotment associations and they all manage to get free woodchip for their nettles as well. it is available. Yeah, it is available and that's certainly
Jane Westoby (29:46)
Yeah, a lot of allotments get free woodchip as well. So I've been a member of a couple of allotment associations and they all manage to get free woodchip for their members as well. So it is available, it is out there.
Ben Raskin (30:01)
you know likely to be the the cheapest way. As I say you can also buy wood chip you can buy it in in sort of 40 60 litre bags you can buy it in cubic meter bags. Prices range when I looked at it last prices range from sort of 70 pounds for a cubic meter up to some people charging 140 pounds for a cubic meter which I'm not sure I would pay that I mean 70 I might but it's
Yeah, it's not it's not always that easy. So those those really are the two main ways I mean, some tree surgeons you you can pay so even where they're not giving away free, they might charge 40 pounds for a load or something and that's pretty good value. The other other way potentially for the delivery. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other way potentially, but obviously is a bit
Jane Westoby (30:35)
Hmm.
Yeah, and that's essentially for the delivery really. It's for the truck and the chipping itself, yeah.
Ben Raskin (30:58)
longer term and requires an investment time. But the other way is to find a local landowner with some woods and offer to manage some of their woodland in return for the free product. And there are lot of farmers who have areas of trees and are not that interested in managing animal waste. I mean, that is changing a bit but but often the woodland is not seen as the
Jane Westoby (31:13)
Oof.
Okay.
Ben Raskin (31:26)
their sort of primary farming activity and they're often under managed. sometimes it's not profitable at the moment. No. But again, it might be that if you you know, group of people want to sort of manage and they could give some of the material back to the farmer and take some themselves. So so if you know, if you're interested in doing it that much, then there's definitely opportunities there. But obviously, requires a bit more commitment.
Jane Westoby (31:29)
Mm.
It's not profitable for them, is it? There's no profit in managing a forest.
A bit of hard work. Yeah,
of course. Yeah. Okay. So you've mentioned the book a few times. Tell us a little bit more about this book.
Ben Raskin (31:57)
So you've mentioned the book of these times. I know, I'm sorry. us a little bit more about this book. Well, so
it came out, as I said, came out partly out of my experience at the farm and partly out of a number of trials and projects that I was involved with. One I mentioned that Willow Innovative Farmers Field Lab. We did another Innovative Farmers Field Lab with Ian Tolhurst, I'm sure lot of your listeners will have heard of, who's an amazing market gardener in Berkshire. And he
Jane Westoby (32:23)
Hmm.
Ben Raskin (32:27)
had been, well two things we did with him actually, the field lab was around using woodchip as a propagation compost. So he'd been making his own propagation compost for vegetable seedlings out of composted woodchip effectively, and had been having quite a lot of success with it. And we wanted to test that against sort of industry standard propagation compost. And it did really well. It basically was comparable. There was very little difference between his own
homemade and sort of leading peat based actually compost because we even wanted to try it against Pete. So that was really, really interesting. And then the other bit he was doing was spreading wood chip on his soil as a soil amendment. So this is sort of like a sprinkling really. So this is in his field scale vegetables. So he wasn't putting it on as a mulch. It was almost like, you look at it and you could sort of you could see that it had been spread, but you could also see the soil underneath.
Jane Westoby (33:00)
Wow.
Ben Raskin (33:27)
And he his soil health, I he's been so he's been growing for, I don't know, 30 years or something on the site that he's at and doing he's a pioneer of all kinds of stuff under sowing and green manures and long rotations. And so he's been doing the right thing, if you like on this soil for 30 years. And he says when he started using wood chip, his soil health and production jumped up another level entirely. It was like a step change. And I remember going over one time looking at his field
the year, the sort of the months after he'd spread the wood chip, and we looked down at the soil and I couldn't see an area of soil that wasn't a worm cast. Everything was a worm cast. He's not on the best land. He's on grade three land, is which is sort of not the best growing land, but this his soil health was just extraordinary. And then the organic research center, which is a, again, a long standing organization that does trials on organic farming.
Jane Westoby (34:07)
Wow, okay.
Ben Raskin (34:25)
they were running a program looking at ramiel woodchips, so this small woodchip and whether you could spread it directly on the soil. And there'd been a whole program of research in Canada in the 80s on this, which showed some really good results, but then nobody seemed to have done anything since then. And so the Organic Research Center ran this three-year program trialing, adding the ramiel woodchip on different farms.
So basically there's of this drip drip drip of different things that people were doing with woodchip and I kind of thought this is really interesting. you know and there was sort of the odd article about woodchip and people obviously interested but no there didn't seem to be any place where it would have all been pulled together and so I thought well I better do it then. that was was
Jane Westoby (35:14)
Fab, okay, so that's a little bit about the background of the book. So I'm sure it's an absolute wealth
Ben Raskin (35:21)
knowledge and resource. think I'm going to have to get hold of that book myself as well. Is it available on Amazon? It's available anyway.
Jane Westoby (35:21)
of knowledge and resource. think I'm gonna have to get a hold of that book myself as well. I'll be going on to, is it available on Amazon?
Ben Raskin (35:31)
It's published by Chelsea Green Publishing, so you can get it direct from their website. Obviously, if anyone wants a signed copy, they can contact me through my website. But yeah, also available from all good book shops. Fabulous. Okay, well I will put a link to that into the...
Jane Westoby (35:34)
Yeah, okay.
Aww.
Fabulous. Okay, well I will put a link to that
into the chat as well so that everyone can see that and then they can have a little look. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your knowledge all about woodchip. I think probably a lot of people are going to be running around now trying to find some woodchip desperately for all manner of uses, I think.
Ben Raskin (35:55)
Well, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your knowledge all about woodchip I think probably a lot of people are going to be running around now trying to find some woodchip desperately for all manner of uses Well, thank you
so much for having me on I always love always always love talking with you
Jane Westoby (36:16)
And it was fabulous to have you on.
Ben Raskin (36:21)
So thanks so much and hopefully we'll have another conversation very soon. I'd love to.
Jane Westoby (36:21)
Fabulous, well thanks so much and hopefully we'll have another conversation very soon.