If you understand the issues around fresh chips, then you can work around it. Fresh chips try to decompose. When piled up, that facilitates the process and the pile heats up. The process requires nitrogen to work, stealing it from nearby areas if necessary.

You can minimize problems with using fresh chips by 1)spreading them thinly (no more than one inch or so), 2) sprinkling a little extra fertilizer with nitrogen (10-10-10 is ok) in the area so that any decomposition doesn't rob your plants of the nitrogen that they need.

Otherwise, if you need to use it thickly, then I'd let it season until spring. And watch it steam most of the winter!

I'm using fresh chips as very thin mulch for existing flowerbeds. I'm also laying it very thick (6 inches or more) to kill weeds in places I intend to plant shrubs in the spring. Seems to be working well, but I'm having trouble killing the wild violets and onions. They just grow right up through the thick chips. I think wild violets will survive a nuclear holocaust. A world of wild violets and cockroaches- just think of it.

Esther, try putting a large piece of cardboard over those violets then cover with mulch and I bet that will do the trick. Seems to work for everything I've tried it on including plants with tough root systems like BIG wild blackberry bushes, tough tall field grass, everything.

It's easy to do and the cardboard's free from your grocer/Walmart/etc...Should kill those buggers long before the cardboard decomposes.

Sincerely, Danielle J.

Brilliant about the cardboard. That may answer my problem from the other thread I posted too, about how to kill existing weed-lawn so I can seed grass.

I've done something similar w/ newspaper in the past, but I've found it messy with the newspaper working its way out and getting everywhere. At least the cardboard I could pull up after the job was done.