Sir it is not often that you are wrong but this time you are rightSyed Adnan wrote:I dont think adding wood is a good idea as it will take up Nitrogen from soil to get itself decomposed, it will starved the soil from nutrients, iam using vinegar for my pots just one tea spoon in a liter of water works fine for container gardening.
Yes most tree barks and wood contains large amounts of cellulose. Microorganisms in the soil that decompose cellulose work quickly and require large amounts of nitrogen. This results in a lack of nitrogen available to the plant growing in the medium.
The debate continues
However importantly by contrast, in pine bark (not the wood itself), there is not much cellulose, but a lot of lignin. Lignin decomposes much more slowly, so the nitrogen is not depleted. It also "opens up" breathing space in the potting medium, creating best oxygen/gaseous exchange/mycorrhiza conditions thus optimising the ideal root health environment. It also makes the potting medium "consistently" acidic.
I suppose that if you fed your plants regularly with a liquid fertilizer, you could mitigate the nitrogen issue with wood, but I've never tried and like you said its not good practise.
Maybe the original poster is getting language confusion differentiating wood from pine bark.
Regards
Ifzal