Not apropos to the question in question, this year I had the people who clear trees for the power company dump mountains of wood chips at Blue Ridge Center.
Not having had time to build serious compost stacks with them, I've been interested in using the chips as mulch in the flower garden, but I've been afraid of poison ivy that was undoubtedly chopped up with the trees (it climbs like mad here) and been afraid of itroducing disease to the garden. I got a chance to talk to my neighbor about this. He just happens to be the commercial mulch king of Northern Virginia. (where, btw, BLUE mulch (died) has become the most popular) I asked him about using tree company wood chips. Surprisingly, he said that if I piled them and they heated, then after 6 weeks the poison ivy and most of the diseases were neutralized, that I should be able to apply them anywhere without fear of poisoning garden workers and so on. My stacks DEFINITELY heated: they smoke as though they have chimneys every morning (or, at least, they did) I'm going to spread a few tons in the near future. I'll let you know how it works out.
