Spread on the surface of your garden up to an inch or two in depth, it likely won't cause problems. Though if the materials are light, you may want to anchor them down against wind and water erosion.

If you dig uncomposted wood products into your soil, they're likely to require more nitrogen to break down. Which they tend to take from the soil, if a balanced amount of nitrogen isn't added -- a process which would likely be easier to accomplish in a compost pile.

All the best,
-Patrick

Just simply cover the surface at 2 inches thick. This will help a lot to conserve water and release CO2 which would help veggies thrive. Extra CO2 is great esp when it's very hot outside and they would absorb more CO2 early in the day before it gets too hot and the stomata will close for the day helping conserve water!

Applied as a mulch to your soil this would be really good because it will then aid in 1) "weed" suppression, 2) soil moisture conservation, 3) soil temperature control, and 4) eventually add some organic matter to your soil. Some peole will be concerned that using this as a mulch might "rob" your soil of Nitrogen which, if used as a mulch, will not happen. If this, or any other high carbon material, is mixed into the soil, a soil amendment and not a mulch, then the soil bacteria will utilize lots of the available soil nitrogen to make the protein their bodies will need to digest that material, but then when they die that Nitrogen will be put back into the soil for use by your plants or other soil bacteria and fungi.

In clay soil, using chunky soil amendments is great because the pieces of organic matter persist for a long time, improving drainage. I would not be afraid to go ahead and mix nearly rotted wood chips into the soil, mostly because you are in a warm climate with clay soil. When I lived in Western NC, I regularly amended beds with half-rotted sawdust and wood chips from horse stable. They worked great.

Here is a link that might be useful: my website

If it is shredded hard wood mulch it will have some chunks of wood in it that take years (decades?) to decompose. That is not a problem in perennials beds but can present some difficulties in any bed that may need to be disturbed each year for planting like vegetables or annuals.