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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Re: Branches and small diameter wood

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  • From: Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Re: Branches and small diameter wood
  • Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 23:27:13 -0700

I honestly can't say I use any one particular method, in fact I'm using all
the methods I know all the time and mutating them as necessary.
I make alot of compost- I always have enough to give it away as presents,
but also I use it in my container mixes (I have a nursery) It is a useful
way to process seedy, weedy or really rich stuff- mature grasses,live
blackberry canes, roadkill. So I never have to garden in soil, unless a
garden is 3 years old or so and I want to let it self-sow. Oregon is rich in
clay, and it's often pretty hard stuff if it's been driven on and then dried
out. Compost is much nicer for gardens. I usually have a number of piles
going big enough to eat a whole deer. Everytime I've tried to sheetmulch
with rich material- veg waste, etc., like I hear some worm fanatics talk
about, I get rodents instead. So that stuff gets composted, unless I have
chickens or other beasts available.
These compost piles can become compost tractors, which my friend Frank
Morton invented. Basically, you just plant the area that the pile just left.
The compost perambulates about the garden leaving a green trail- sort of the
opposite of a giant slug.
I sheet mulch all the time- especially when converting lawn and pasture, but
sometimes on driveway or? Once an area is garden, I don't use barrier, just
a thinner mulch between fresh compost hills or ridges.
I use hugelkultur everytime I'm moving earth. Why dump a bunch of dirt
somewhere without putting a mess of wood under it first? (Understand, I'm a
Yeomans fan, and I figure my first task anywhere is to shape the land to
slow runoff and store water in the soil)
One thing I hardly ever do is burn a bunch of brush- unless I'm trying to
make a poppy bed or somesuch.

-Rick





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