HelpfulGardener.com

We are landscaping our flower bed. We recently had all of our pine trees removed from the front yard as well as the bushes that were there for years.

We also widen the bed and I am not going to put the shrubs and etc until the fall. So I would like to know what products you would recommend to replace what was lost. I don’t want to put topsoil in the bed. Plus I prefer not to spend an arm and a leg if possible.

Were the stumps ground down? Do you have raw/fresh wood chips everywhere?

I don’t want to use those chips from the stumps. They need to be composted. Very strong turpentine odor. If I had a large yard I would have composted them. Plus it would not solve the immediate issue. They were pine stumps.

No you are correct — they need to be decomposed to be useful for anything other than maybe mulch. The could also be used as substrate for inoculating with chicken or the woods mushrooms. (That with speed their decomposition and eventual composting)

I’m trying to imagine what the current state of the area would be.