Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>]

> BTW, where we planted our blueberry bushes, the bulldozed had missed.  All I 
> had to do in those places was lay out small branches stripped off baby pine 
> trees that had been trying to encroach on our apple trees.  Once the needles 
> fell off the branches, I used the branches as stakes elsewhere if they were 
> big enough.  Otherwise I let them stay.   ~Laura

Laura, thanks so much for sharing this--what a great idea! We just cut 
down a *big* arbor vitae that had been a major element in the inner 
landscape at our place since we moved here 22 years ago. (It had 
developed core rot and its multiple trunks were sagging more and more 
earthward.) I wanted very much to use the needles/leaves to mulch both 
our blueberry bed and the space where the arbor vitae had grown, which I 
will plant to Swiss stone pine, cranberries, and other acid-loving 
plants--but it seemed like a prodigious amount of work, snipping off all 
those twig tips. Now my approach will be to simply shear off all the 
branches, lay them on the areas I want to mulch, then next spring pull 
away the larger branches, which by then will have dropped all their 
leaves/needles for a nice mulch.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us