[permaculture] from N-starvation to mulch approach

Dieter Brand diebrand at yahoo.com
Sat Oct 27 05:21:49 EDT 2007


It is clear that woody mulch or leaves will encourage fungal growth
  like in forest soil, while straw or hay will encourage microbial activity
  like you normally have in garden soil. I have always wondered 
  whether the excessive use of leaves or wooded mulch could not
  have a negative effect on garden soil. For example, earthworms
  don't seem to like it. I think it is also clear that woody mulch can
  suppress germination of some seeds.
   
  I don't do sheet mulching. I prefer to add small doses of mulch
  or compost + mulch frequently. Hence, amounts of woody material
  or leaves are never so large as to make a difference. I live in a 
  semi-arid region, and in order to prevent the mulch or compost 
  from drying out, I put down the compost first cover this by a layer 
  of green mulch and top the whole with a layer of woody mulch. 
  This always works well.
   
  Your idea of using mulch from one plant community to plant or
  sow a member of that community seems like good common 
  sense. Talking of Ericaciaea, according to the literature, plants 
  in this family need the mycorrhizae specific to this family to grow 
  well. When I plant blueberries, which are not native to my region, 
  I usually cut a few plants of the Ericaciaea family that are native
  to my region, wait a couple of weeks and then dig the soil from 
  under the cut plants and use it and some of the fine roots for
  planting the blueberries. Hopefully, this will inoculate the soil
  with the right mycorrhizae.
   
  Dieter Brand
  Portugal
  
Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino at comcast.net> wrote:
  I getting ready for another wave of mulching in zone 1-2 areas.. 
appliance store boxes, purchased straw, local horse manure, and rock 
powders and sea weed. My source of arborist chips hasn't been coming 
through.

As i begin to plant up sheet mulched areas, I am finding that straw 
mulch seems to call for herbaceous plantings, and lends itself better to 
seeding. While woody mulch calls for woody or rhizomatous plantings or 
conifer forest understory spp. I just don't like plugging perennial 
divisions into the woody mulch because of the nitrogen issue, but 
live-staking cuttings seems fine. And infill with self seeding species 
(ever popular parsley, calendula, etc..) seems like it makes more sense 
in straw mulches compared to woody mulches. It seems like there is a 
need to align your mulch approach and your target community composition. 
Is this a pattern others have found or thought more about?... it seems 
like it might relate somehow to the distinction between moder and mull 
humus types common in soil ecology literature and perhaps whole 
associations of plants adapted to different soil carbon environments 
(lots of our local Ericaciaea (blueberry family) fruits seem to like 
woody moder soils, but most of our edibles are more field species... 
mull soils)... any thoughts for plants that like to seed into woody 
soils? (then theres mushrooms...)

Paul Cereghino
Olympia, WA


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