Another possible thought- When building a log cabin, or preparing wood for fencing decomp occurs highest when bark is left on. Also same theory for mine timbers and railroad ties… all bark is removed to preserve the wood.
I have always read that burying woodchips is a no no… but what about bark? I do know that bark left on timber that is buried as post gets rapidly composted.
Perhaps i will make a small test bin with bark and tired soil and see what arises.
I have noticed that some greenhouses are cheapos and pot in bark. Plants seem to be ok with it.
That would be nice if i could make potting mix with tired soil and unwanted bark. Perhaps it would grow potatoes or something as well. I have seen people grow potatoes and garlic in rotten hay.
I was raised shortly enough after Hitler that I was culturally affected in lack of affection for German words not used derogatorily- but beyond that, why not just translate and call it mound-culture? I guess because it means more than this and is specifically about burying undigested organic matter at the base of the beds. I can’t come up with another word for that.
Our agriculture got here by way of Europe, and I believe that raised beds over raw organic matter goes back centuries. I started reading about it in the 1980’s or so, but given that for centuries raw animal waste has been partially buried in greenhouses for heat it’s hard to believe that such an obvious method of increasing drainage would not have been practiced since early human agriculture.
I used the method back in the '60’s when I placed a lot of branches before piling on dirt where soil had been washed away. I was impressed by how rapidly an Elephant Heart plum grew over it. I was afraid the decomposing wood might rob N at the time.
i hear you. where i pick fiddleheads in the spring is also where the nettles grow. by time i fill my pail my hands are burning and swollen no matter how careful i am.
In my area I buried a very large mulberry stump roughly 3 feet in diameter and withing 3 years it was totally gone. It shocked me when I went to dig for it and it was gone. Same thing with large willow, ash and other logs. Within 5 years totally gone. Here is where things get odd anything under water will not be decomposed. If you go back a log submerged in water does not dissapear the water preserves it. The difference is our aggressive wood ants and termites, worms, voles and various others devour any organic material underground. Land that is to wet like a swamp, bog, or other wetland termites cannot be effective underground. The key is we have plenty of moisture to keep termites alive it’s their ideal location. Remember termites know their job its us that are trying to change the rules. Ants need moisture and will go to lengths to get it in the summers here. The ants work around the bottoms in the woods actively during the summer as the closer to the pond we get the wetter it gets obviously. A termite man came here once and said this species are called Bermuda ants and there are many species of termites as well down there. The goal is to keep the moisture and them away from anything you want to keep.
We incorporate wood chips and compost in some of our treatment ponds for mine drainage. In that anoxic environment we expect a design life of approximately 20 years because the organics decompose slowly underwater, but that also provides a hospitable environment for sulfate reducing bacteria to fix heavy metals like Iron and Manganese within our media to treat the water. As @alan said, wetlands keep wood “fresh” compared to wood exposed to the air.
At what depth did you add soil? Did you add topsoil? It is still within my theory that the topsoil has the most life that is starving for something to decompose. So i have no issue with shallow dug mounds, with the disturbed soil applied back onto the wood…which goes back to the no-no of burying woodchips. The nitrogen level may be lowered? But for those that are into permaculture and wanting to practice this style of gardening will likely also have access to manure or urine as an amendment.
Since you did the root experiment… i did an experiment 2 years ago and tilled in about 50 bags of leaves into a 50ft row in the Fall. (before i got my chipper/shredder), My tiller struggled and i had to make about 20 passes to get it all in the soil…but it went. I applied another 10 bags as top dressing and left it alone until spring. The tilled leaves disappeared…gone. Black Gold was in the row. Blackberries live in the row now and to be honest i dont know if i will ever have to water them. I put woodchips on top and even in the dryest months the soil is full of moisture.
So perhaps there will be a Baum Blattkultur in English Tree Leaf Garden.
Marshland usually has rich, productive soil, once you drain the water. Near me, onions, lettuce and vegies in the cabbage family are grown commercially in muck soil with canals dug through them for drainage. Black muck soil with about 30% organic matter.
I don’t know how long it takes for that muck soil to change to just plain silty soil once it becomes aerobic. I wonder if productivity gradually declines at a certain point in OM reduction. Or rather, I wonder at what point. .
The mound I had constructed was over 20 feet tall and mostly pond dirt but there was some clay in there. In my case I was just burying debris. Sometimes we push down 30 trees and bury them under the soil. The trees are laying flat on the ground we will go back later to use that soil on other projects but not anytime soon. In this case we are mostly burying those trees in sopping wet mud. My intention was not to grow anything there exactly https://growingfruit.org/t/ponds-are-a-great-investment/7033
The trees in the path of progress sometimes have to go. In addition we fill ditches with hay , logs, branches or whatever it takes. We don’t use as much wood as this method does we use mostly dirt and clay. I’m going to try to do it their way next time. Here are some photos of cleaning out a pond and later it’s joined with the larger pond.
I think as a top dressing lightly turned in the fall into living soil, the marshland soil would be great. I would think that over fall and winter that the soil would be charged to grow in the spring.
I plan on doing some of this myself sort of. I live on a rural road that has a ditchline beside of it that every fall fills the ditch with leaves and after a few years becomes clogged.
The state road scoops it out and treats it as waste…dumping it wherever they can to be forgotten. My theory is that this would be a great soil amendment. Erosion of topsoil and leaves rotting for years has to be good.
Worst case scenario it will be good flowerbed material.
up here our big rivers flood into flood plains in the spring from melting snow runoff. many of the best fields are in this floodplain as the silt deposit adds organics every spring. last spring, after the waters receded. i went around the edges of these fields and scraped up the organic rich sediment left on the surface and used it to top off my raised beds. they produced phenomenally this summer. this is my new source of fresh compost every spring and its free. also adds alot of micros as well.
We have naturally heavy thick clay soil. For years, I have been planting old, rotted wood below ground when I plant a tree or bush. Trees and all woody plants need a fungal soil, and so this helps. Since it’s already rotten, it doesn’t bind up all the nitrogen. Also, it improves the drainage if you’ve got heavy clay. I did a little bit of hugulculture but in the last few years I’ve been using biochar instead. I think it lasts longer in the soil, so better for carbon sequestration, and retains more nutrients.
John S
PDX OR
If you want to try a test area for heavy clay soil try tilling in leaves. The leaves attract worms and microbes that till 24/7/365. If you dont have a tiller make a worm bed and fill it with heavy clay and mix in bags of leaves and compost and worms with a fork… the clay goes away and black gold is left behind.
I think thats how the vikings and egyptians and mayans along with other pre-industrial cultures did it. They used the rich sediments near rivers to grow crops.
I visit a camp every once in awhile that is near a river. its an old flood plain that was resolved with culverts etc. They have a very nice garden that is sandy loam… all they do is till in the leaves that fall and plant.
Yes, and if you don’t want to till, because it kills all of the microbes that make your soil fertile, you can broadfork it in. If you don’t have a broadfork, you can just dig your shovel so the blade is straight down, then jimmy it back and forth to open a “crevasse”, into which you can put the organic material. Or you can leave it on the surface to let the worms bring it down when they’re ready.
Ah yes the dreaded fluids from cars in disprepair.
I dont fear that much, as the soil that i tend was also cultivated by tractors, tillers and other means that could have also leaked fluids from disprepair. That soil has also seen many man made fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides over the decades… come to think of it irrigated by water that was treated by chemicals. Worse even rained on for a century by chemicals and pollutants in the atmosphere caused by man.
Luckily my road has a 2-3ft berm of stone and the cars in disrepair may leak petroleum products onto the roadway…but petroleum products naturally occuring and from the Earth. Coolant would be an exception. Luckily those ditches are fed from hillsides where man doesnt live and there is a less liklihood of chemicals.
The food i eat in the grocery store or restaurants was likely grown in more pollutants, chemicals, herbicides and pesticides than i will ever encounter on my farm… so i feel ok with the ditch soil as at least being ok for my flowerbeds.
Road Salt could be a factor however… where i live we have winter…and of course man has to apply salt… time will tell i do want to at least experiment with it…its free.
I imagine that the soil and atmosphere before industry was amazing… however at my place on Earth i dont think i can escape the damage done to the air, land or water if i tried.
The upper half of my orchard is loamy sand as deep as I can dig. I want to increase organic matter, but the trees are already planted. I’m thinking of using a post hole digger to sink some logs about 4 inches in diameter and about 2.5 feet long around some of my trees. I’m thinking 4 to 6 logs per tree. I’ve found some mixtures of endomycorhizzae fungus wettable powder that lll spray the logs with to inoculate them. I figure I’ll try it with half the trees and report what happens in a few years. I’m not sure if this qualifies as hugelkultur, but it is definitely the inspiration for what I want to try.
