More about the palm leaf wood chips...

Closeup of palm leaf wood chips covering soil in the Sunshine blueberry container pot

In yesterday's post I mentioned that I cut up the woody fibrous base of palm leaves into small pieces to use as wood chips to cover soil in the Sunshine blueberry container pot to help keep moisture from evaporating from the soil. As shown in the photo, some of the pieces are more fibrous and stringy while others are harder material. And it really is an efficient way to keep the moisture in the soil. Eventually, like other wood chips, the palm leaf "chips" also decompose, becoming part of the soil. Then I just cut up fresh chips from the fallen palm leaves/fronds.

And here is one of my sources for those wood chips, a palm leaf that was blown off the neighbor's giant palm tree into our yard. The base of the leaf, is a tubular sheath that usually splits on one side at maturity. It gets very woody, so that is the part I cut into small pieces, using garden clippers. I got the idea when I noticed that when some of the palm leaves crash onto the driveway small pieces break off. I thought, hey, why not use these as wood chips. And they serve well for that purpose.

Try it!