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  • From: Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Tons of wood chips
  • Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:27:12 +0000

The power company is cutting lots of oaks and a few pines and things out
back along a long stretch. I'm having them dump a bunch of it (at least 6
big loads) and will be using it partly to cover a lot of the grass in the
front yard, and just as general organic matter added in all over.

My questions are:
1. I have noticed how quickly everything breaks down here, but how thick
should we spread the mulch if we want to kill the grass? We're taking back
our lawn. I see quotes like 4" and 6" deep, and am thinking of maybe putting
cardboard or newspaper under parts of it, especially where we want to make
permanent pathways.

I like the cardboard/newspaper--that's how I've been putting down my "kill mulches" in my emergent forest garden, whether in the main areas themselves (where I've used everything from pony poop/stable bedding to chips to litter from the poultry house to lawn clippings over cardboard/newspaper) or to establish the pathways (maybe 4" over cardboard/newspaper). As for how much: far's I know, it's one of those situations where the answer is "How much you got?" The deeper the better, I think. Some really tough plants (violets, plantain, etc.) come up thru such a kill mulch anyway--I'm laying down a second application some places. Once the roots are exhausted, your mulched area should be free from such incursions, and subject only to blown-in seeds.


2. If I put wood chips on growing beds, will it pull nitrogen from the soil?

You see all sorts of answers to this, from "emphatically yes!" to "only if you mix the wood into the soil." I lean to the latter. I've had experience, though, where incorporation of woody material (including oak leaves) in the soil had disastrous growth-suppressing effect a whole season. Also, have had experience where fresh woodchips used as a mulch close around estab'd plantings didn't seem to do the plants any good. Might be better to let them age awhile before using close around existing plants. If using for pathways, not an issue.

By the way, everybody: Cannot recommend strongly enough Paul Stamets's new book MYCELIUM RUNNING. (Stamets is the big mushroom guru out in Washington state--also THE MUSHROOM CULTIVATOR, GROWING GOURMET AND MEDICINAL MUSHROOMS, a book on the psilocybes, etc.) My head is buzzing with exciting possibilities. Forget "recycling" if it means separating out newspaper and cardboard and sending them off to recycling streams elsewhere--they can very well be recycled right on your own place using a number of edible mushrooms which eat anything based on wood pulp for breakfast. And those coarse woody things like rosemary trimmings, tree prunings, oak leaves, etc. that are difficult to break down in the compost heap, thus the temptation to send them off to the landfill? Do not despair--there are species, Lepista nuda (blewitt--a prized edible species) prominent among them, which *love* "complex debris piles" like the above, plus grass clippings.

Wood chips are a gold mine for the potential mushroom cultivator--there are many useful species which utilize them well, breaking them down into new soil. Out in Stamets's area, it is well known that the best place to look for psilocybes is areas that have been mulched with wood chips or "beauty bark." I've seen a similar occurrence here: I laid down several heavy applications of woodchips as mulch, and in two of them I've gotten spontaneous fruitings of Stropharia rugoso-annulata (King or Wine-cap Stropharia, a choice edible), though I had never seen any on my property before.

The potential for using mushrooms for decomposing/recycling/reclaiming are enormous. Check out the book.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

"The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." (Winston Churchill)




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