Mulch suitability

[sususanan]

My allotment has had a pile of mulch delivered that we can use. It's bits of woodchip with browned conifer leaf. Would putting this on rhubarb and around fruit trees be a good or bad idea, or won't it make any difference?

[Flo]

It'll be acid so I'd use round things that like ericaceous compost (blueberries, Azaleas, rhododendrons and such) or use on your paths. I'd say it would cause damage where you are thinking of using it as those aren't things that do well with acid soil.

[Weedo]

I agree with Flo - It would be safer to use it as path material, at least until it has had a year or so the leach. I have a large pile of mixed wood chip and leaf material as a result of a series of storms last winter (see background in my recent post on fig variety) This is a mix of eucalypt, silky oak, conifer, English oak and olive. Its fate will be to mulch around native shrubs etc. in a couple of years; meantime it is being turned and watered to leach tannins etc. and to partly compost.