Back to Eden Gardening and Hugelkulture and other non-conventional garden methods

[lazy gardener]

Termites shouldn't be a problem unless they move into your home! Doubtful they'd take up residence in wood chips. but, they would in the pine. They would certainly break it down faster.

 

[pennyJo1960]

that is why we love our concrete siding on this house our inspector when we bought it said treat it with care don't put allot of wholes and never try to take it off

 

[chickadoodles]

Termites and carpenter ants make quick work of decaying wood. We have both eating rotted trees here. But as long as they stay away from the house were ok.
I treat around the house 2 times a year with spray and granules to keep them away.

 

[Arielle2]

I am surrounded by woods with some dead trees. WDe leave them for the wild life to use. That old pine has been standing dead for some 10 years until the storm brought it down.

So now I am confused. Do we bury dead wood? Just green? Only hardwoods? Really confused.

 

[chickadoodles]

I am surrounded by woods with some dead trees. WDe leave them for the wild life to use. That old pine has been standing dead for some 10 years until the storm brought it down.

So now I am confused. Do we bury dead wood? Just green? Only hardwoods? Really confused.

We leave our dead trees down these days. We can't cut and haul them any more.
Dh loves to burn them when there's no wind.

 

[Arielle2]

Our open burning season is the winter season. Even as a farm we are required to check in with the fire department like everyone else.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Planted out a large raised bed---and stuffed old dried wood along the inside edges. FIgure they will eventually absorb water and start to rot. Had an old pine come down, guess it was done providing perches and bugs to the wildlife, crashed down over a coop and into the garden space. Just moving bits and peices to a new job!!!

Hating that I dont have a chipper. Figure to make piles of chopped brush and add compost and such to get it brewing. Then spread it out for planting. Thinking it might be a good idea to make pile near the fruit trees and let the material feed the fruit trees......

any one see a problem with that?????

Is chopping it up and tossing it back in the woods an option? It'll break down eventually

If you pile it without burning it'll last a good long while and provide nice rodent habitat; something to keep in mind. The fungal breakdown of the wood takes a LOT of moisture. So piles don't readily break down.

If you can chip it, innoculating the pile with soil from the forest floor will get the process started better than your average household garden compost. But without enough moisture even chip piles will last a long time.

 

[HoopyFrood]

An update on an experiment I started in March and posted here: trying to get apple and weigela cuttings to take root.

I used rooting hormone on all 15 cuttings and had promising initial results. However ALL except one weigela cutting failed to take permanent root. I was somewhat lax with temperature monitoring and I'm not sure if that was the problem. I have more summer research to do to figure out what went wrong.

The one weigela that did put on roots was killed by me transplanting it. I started it in an idiotic choice of container and I'm sure wrestling it out damaged it's fragile roots.

So total fail on my part. But I'll do more research and try again in the fall.

The good news is the old apple I was trying to propagate survived the winter. So did all three of our vole-girdled weigelas. You could have knocked me over with a feather when they started budding!

So I'll get one more chance to try rooting the apple cuttings before I have to start finding a new source of cuttings. Plenty of time to figure out what I did wrong before then.

I'm trying to start black locust (12), silverberry (7), and Siberian pea shrub (6) all from seed right now. Those are the companion plantings for my (hopefully) future mini-orchard. Hopefully I have better luck with those

EDIT: Holy smokes! Two SBS have sprouted, one BL has, too, and I think I see five other BL pushing up! Exciting!! Silverberry is sown twice as deep as SBS so I'm not surprised I have not seen those yet.

 

[lazy gardener]

Siberian Pea is notoriously slow to germinate. I have 3 Sib. Peas in bloom, so should have a good crop of seeds for further seeding.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Siberian Pea is notoriously slow to germinate. I have 3 Sib. Peas in bloom, so should have a good crop of seeds for further seeding.

Very cool! One is going in our chicken garden and the rest in the "orchard." I'm hoping to use them for both people food and chicken food Best of luck with your propagation!

I scarified the SBS seeds with a 24 hr soak, then stratified them in the fridge in a ziplock bag for about six weeks (30 days was recommended to me, but I was busy). I planted the seeds on 5/29, 3/8" deep. So I have two SBS in a week of germination. I have no idea if that is fast, average, or slow