i hear you. i have everything planted in rows so instead of mowing around individual trees and bushes i mulched the entire row with enough mulch to smother the grass in between. now its just strait up and down. as everything grows in it should shade out the grass as my rows go east to west. no more weeding as long as you put at least 4in of fresh mulch every spring. my local arborist is in the area often so he dumps me a few loads a summer.
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I believe in wood in, on or under the ground. The organisms that break down wood need moisture, oxygen, and adequate warmth. I live in a forested area and I’ve seen a few dozen types of mushrooms growing here. If wood hits the ground they make short work of it. All the wood chips I put down are compost in two years, tops. I don’t bother to add soil onto the top of a wood pile, just increasingly smaller branches (ramial wood, as Michael Philips called it) and then wood chips. I only add compost into the spot I’m planting, but I think planting straight into year old wood chips would be fine. I put bedding from the chicken coop on as top dressing. The very open structure of the pile sets up a perfect environment for wood rot, and enough rot and debris filters down to keep moisture for the plant roots.
I did worry about a lack of nitrogen, but it just hasn’t been a huge problem. I think the rotting wood releases most nutrients that plants need as fast as they can use them.
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Are you planning to add mushroom spores?
In my tests lack of nitrogen was a factor. I did a test on half a dozen blackberry plants in a row and only added woodchips and leaf debris/compost. In year 2 all plants were not thriving and were much smaller than plants that received nitrogen fertilizer.
I started this a few years ago after watching Back to Eden the film by Paul Gautschi. I also noticed that in my berry groups that alot of people were using this technique. The main difference is that Back to Eden uses chickens to decompose the chips and their fertilizer is mixed in, then shoveled and wheelbarrowed to the growing areas after it has composted and nitrogen added by manures.
Just adding woodchips (limbs, leaves, bark) to bare ground for me has caused about the same thing that happens in the forest naturally. Not much green vegetative growth on forest floor…until the mycorrhizae/fungis/bacteria have developed colonies and the root systems of plants and trees can then absorb nutrients in concert with these systems in place.
In my system the addition of carbon creates a higher acid content which is good for growing berries. What i am finding is that the promoting of worms to speed up the process may in time decrease the need for the addition of Nitrogen. Worm castings create Nitrogen and Humic acid which is easy for the roots to absorb. (this idea was from The Biggest Little Farm).
The cycle however somewhat becomes a make-work project. Constant adding of carbon as the worms and biome are voracious feeders once established.
So in my case…the woodchips and composts need help to get the nutrients to my plants and trees as they do in an undisturbed forest. They also need time.
I do note that both Back to Eden and The Biggest Little Farm both use chickens and/or ducks/geese as part of the process. I think Stephan Sobkowiak does also along with Sheep.
For now i am relying on horse manure instead.
My woodchips/leaves and manure are all unwanted in my area and free.
Not reinventing the wheel… just trial and error in the hope of some form of permaculture system that does not need commercial fertilizers.
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I haven’t decided yet whether to add mushroom spores. We have successfully grown shitake mushrooms on logs in the past, but I’ve never used anything other than logs, What type of mushrooms would work best on this?
Honestly I’m not sure. I do know that the fresher your carbon source (logs) are, the more likely it is that the mushrooms you do want to grow will establish, rather than whatever naturally takes over to colonize.
It may be worth researching what good edibles prefer roots rather than growing on standing trees, so probably not chicken of the woods or lions mane for example.
People do pay big money for pro-mix with mychorrizae already inoculated to improve plant growth, so it’s not off base to intentionally incorporate preferred food species into the fray.
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wine cap and elm oyster grow great on fresh woodchips after inoculating the chips cover with 6in. of straw to shade the chips and help them colonize. some just add a few in. of soil on top to do the same thing and it also helps keep moisture. been 6 yrs since i inoculated under my trees/ bushes and i still get a few come up here and there.
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Thanks for the great info. I can’t disagree with your experience, and I’ve had some situations that were similar. What I’m describing I liken to starting a burn pile. Carefully assembling is the main idea behind consistent results. Also. it’s hard to compare ingredients and the presence and suitability of decomposers. To ‘ignite’ the pile I finish with a layer of chicken bedding which contains more than enough nitrogen to feed the top layer of chips, which themselves have been already colonized by decomposers while piled for aging. The plants growing in this start up pile grow with vigor and and great color. I think the next year (which includes the winter since an active pile can keep going) is building up a reserve of nutrients for the following crop (in annual planting) I have peach trees growing in some older beds and they also show vigorous growth with little more than an annual mulch with more chips.
But I didn’t invent this. Eliot Coleman has grown a market garden for decades (and written several books about it) and he uses only leaves tilled under in the fall as his source of nitrogen. The element is there, especially if it can be freed up and stored for the plants to use. This will not be as urea or other pure nitrogen, but in more stable chemical forms. Also, it will be most accessible to plants that have made a good connection with fungi that will greatly expand their “root” system throughout the pile.
I grow a lot of plants in pots. At this point the potting mix I use is about 85 % well colonized wood chips, usually mixed with peat moss and some mineral powders. I do add a handful of chicken manure to about a five gallon bucket of this mix, and that’s good for a full season of healthy growth. Since the roots of a potted plant can’t make the wider connections that plants in the ground can I will top dress the plants that start to show signs of nutrient deficiency. But often I’ve discovered that the problem in these plants is some root injury related to watering (or not watering in time).
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I dont believe this to be true as read. Perhaps the previous year or previous to that year leaves…but not the leaves from the previous season.
In time i think Nitrogen is added to soil by Leaves and Woodchips… as found in this study. However Nitrogen is needed in the initial years of incorporation.
like ive said before from my many years experiences. mulch placed on the top of the soil doesn’t rob N from the root zone. only where the soil contacts the mulch. as long as its not tilled in you’re good. think of a forest. there’s lots of mulch as well as twigs and logs yet everything grows well with no addition of N. leave it on top and your good. i do agree if you want to condition the soil and plant fairly soon i would then add a fertilizer or add it in fall and by spring it will be all broken down with no need to fertilize. when i did my hugel style raised beds i added some horse manure on top of the wood to speed up the process but really not nescessary as like the mulch the only place that N is reduced is where the soil contacts the wood. the rest of the soil is unaffected and still capable of feeding your plants.
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The slowness of the process of breaking woody fibers down means not a lot of nitrogen is sequestered at a specific point in the cycle. So, in most cases chips on the surface do more good than (harm from) any nitrogen they take up…and if they take it up, they’ll end up releasing more than they take up temporarily.
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yes but at the beginning they only take some N from about 1/2in.of the soil closest to the mulch, not from deeper than that. even less than that if there was mulch there the previous season. why i usually mulch a new tree with chic manure then green woodchips to kick start the process but ive done it with just wood chips and saw about the same amount of new growth later on.
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I find your comments informative. (Even if I don’t always follow.) I guess I’ve just been lazy and not pushed my plants much more than the natural soil supplies.
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got this info. from writings of Dr. Byant Redhawk in the permies.com website. he has a degree in soil science. go check it out. hes wrote books on the subject.
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Looks like much useful info there…thanks.
Most mushrooms like Shitake have to be introduced to fresh fallen/cut logs.
The exceptioon would be Grifola frondosa hen-of-the-woods , maitake
Plug Spawn Pack – Maitake, Hen of the Woods Mushroom, Grifola frondosa – 100 plugs – Everything Mushrooms
And Wine Caps
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I agree. I once planted a new lawn on very sandy, nutrient poor soil. This was a landscaping job for a customer, so I needed to be sure the grass would take off well. I incorporated a fair supply of organic fertilizer rated at 5% nitrogen. Scary low compared to what Scott’s sells for grass. But to top it off, I mulched the entire lawn with fresh sawdust from a local mill. I needed something to hold moisture on top of all the sand, and, like you, I knew the nitrogen would only be used in the sawdust on the very surface. It was a dry summer, but I watered and the lawn came in fine with great color. I advised the owner to use the same fertilizer and avoid chemicals, which would sink through the sand so fast the grass roots would barely get any.
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I assume that Coleman was tilling in the leaves every year, so the nitrogen from previous years was already available. But if he used chopped up leaves and the soil had built up decent biological activity, including organisms which would further break down the leaves, especially diverse invertebrates to chew debris into smaller fragments, even the previous fall leaves would be adding nutrients the next spring.
But Coleman was writing 30 years ago. I don’t know if he ever got past the idea of mechanical tilling, which ruins soil structure and generally works against the natural process of incorporating new materials into soil.
The link you sent confirms what we’ve been discussing and fits in well with my experience. Thanks! My property averages about 1 foot of soil before you hit limestone ledge. The soil itself is clay with a few inches of organics accumulated as a forest. It took me a couple years to realize that creating soil is a lot easier then trying to improve what I had. Thus I started hauling as much wood chips as I could get. To my advantage the chips I get are mostly from ramial wood - branches that still have a higher amount of living cells, and thus more nutrients, than whole tree chips. So they break down especially fast. But the bigger nuggets are good for drainage as well as holding moisture, not to mention long term nutrients.