Topic: evergreen chippings in container???

[shamo]

Hi everyone, newbie here so forgive the silly questions. I'm a teacher at a primary school and have started a gardening club for 7-11 yr olds. As the school has rabbits roaming freely (not my idea!) I am building large box planters around 3 ft off the ground to keep the greedy critters off our produce. I have ordered some improved top soil but felt 3ft of soil depth was a little excessive and not necessary. I do have heaps of fresh chippings from several lellandii trees I cut down recently and chipped. Could I use these to bulk out the bottom half and then top up with a good foot or more of top soil?

My concern is the acidity of the chips and the active composting that would be going on underneath my growing plants. Am I right to worry or will any nasties travel down into the ground beneath the planters? Would a barrier or buffer of some sort do the trick?

Any help would be great.

[chriscross1966]

I'd be more worried about the toxicity of leylandii than the acidity.... We always used to have to compost it for a year before we used ours, though that was as a mulch so YMMV.. What about gravel?.... a foot of that in the bottom of the container would be great for drainage.....

[shamo]

Hi, thanks for the reply.
Our problem is due to the layout of the school our gardens are surounded by buildings with no acess to the outside world so everything has to be barrowed through the school hence why I was hoping to use the chippings that are already there.

[manicscousers]

trouble with leylandii , they stop everything growing under them, we have some around the edge of our site and nothing grows there  :-\
we use polystyrene broken into pieces in the bottom of containers, depending on what we're growing in them  :)