garden clipping/pruning used as mulch

[MagicHorseGarden]

Hello everybody, new to the forum here and also fairly new to being a caretaker of a botanical garden, but not to food gardening. I have long used fallen leaves from maple and cottonwood trees as mulch around my vegetables and it works great.
Now my question is, I have pruned and cut back many of the bushes and trees around here lilacs boxwood hedges Rhododendrum’s cherry trees Maple trees Japanese willow and others that I don’t remember the name of, I have put them through a chipper/shredder and would like to use them as mulch around some of the plants they were cut from as well as perennials around the garden, is it ok to use such a mix of chipped up shredded branches and leaves for other plants, what I mean could it possibly be toxic to some of the perennials I would mulch around.
Thanks
Tyler

 

[DirtMechanic]

Hello everybody, new to the forum here and also fairly new to being a caretaker of a botanical garden, but not to food gardening. I have long used fallen leaves from maple and cottonwood trees as mulch around my vegetables and it works great.
Now my question is, I have pruned and cut back many of the bushes and trees around here lilacs boxwood hedges Rhododendrum’s cherry trees Maple trees Japanese willow and others that I don’t remember the name of, I have put them through a chipper/shredder and would like to use them as mulch around some of the plants they were cut from as well as perennials around the garden, is it ok to use such a mix of chipped up shredded branches and leaves for other plants, what I mean could it possibly be toxic to some of the perennials I would mulch around.
Thanks
Tyler

Probably not toxic in the sense you are referring to but mostly likely a carrier of whatever pathogens were on or in those plants that were trimmed. Without an intermediate purification step, such as hot composting, you have become a vector for spreading disease.

 

[MagicHorseGarden]

Ok great, all the plants were very healthy looking, but I never thought of a disease carrier for another plant, I will hot compost for a couple days before I mulch
thanks DirtMechanic

 

[DirtMechanic]

Ok great, all the plants were very healthy looking, but I never thought of a disease carrier for another plant, I will hot compost for a couple days before I mulch
thanks DirtMechanic

I did not realize how many host plants, like maple trees, are not really impacted by a pathogen but when one plants a garden downwind they must jump out of the trees like D-day paratroopers.

 

[roadrunner]

It's called Chop and Drop and it's just fine. I use all my cuttings as mulch; I never discard yard waste for city pick up.

 

[MagicHorseGarden]

Chop n drop, ok that’s along the lines of what I was thinking, there isn’t really much maple in the chipped up brush I have, is maple something to really worry about used as fresh mulch in quite a small ratio to all the other chippedshredded up stuff, is this getting to scientific?