Sawdust in the Garden
Before adding anything to your gardens you should test your soil to learn what it may be lacking or what you need to add to balance the soil's nutrients. Testing your soil yourself is actually quite easy. You can find soil testers at your local home store that only cost a few dollars and they come with very easy to read charts to help you understand what your results mean.

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006

When you know more about what your soil is lacking, adding to your soil is that much easier! Sawdust will work in a number of ways with your soil. If you want to cut the nitrogen in your soil, adding sawdust will prevent your plants from being able to absorb the nitrogen from the soil. Using sawdust from certain woods can also harm your garden as well. Using sawdust from walnut or cedar or even from preserved woods, could be adding harmful chemicals to your soil that will eventually kill off plants that you are trying to grow in that area.

If you are using sawdust to break up hard soil, but your soil doesn't lack any other specific nutrient, you can add nitrogen to the soil so that your plants will still get the nitrogen that they need in order to grow properly. Sawdust by itself is not a great element to be adding to your garden otherwise. You can also mix your sawdust with certain manures or compost to keep the soil or the added element loose for great growing conditions without the side effects of lowered nitrogen.

Adding sawdust around plants that do not like nitrogen or that do not need nitrogen in order to grow will act as a good cover so that weeds will not grow around your plants. Using sawdust as thin mulch will also help keep moisture in the soil around those plants that do not require higher nitrogen in order to grow. The best situation is to avoid using sawdust in your garden unless you have a high nitrogen problem in your soil.