Thou Shall Not Rely on Woodchips Alone
Good Evening, Morning, or Afternoon Steemit folks.
It's been weeks since I've posted anything. We've had a super busy last couple of weeks, and tons that I could write about... but this one's good info for anyone as inexperienced in permaculture as myself.
This row of trees that we have facing East our our door has been one of the multiple things that we've been working at the past couple weeks. When we moved in, there was this black fence that was propped up, and zip tied to steel rods in the ground - separating the two row of trees. I am pretty sure that the intent of this was to discourage the deer from coming in and destroying the trees until they were large enough to "fend for themselves". While this was successful, it also left the yard even uglier than in this picture where the black fence is gone. Unfortunately the orange one is a requirement right now (again, to keep the deer out - and to give us a bit of a break between us and the crop that's poisoned multiple times per year.
It wasn't purely the fence that made the area ugly, but also that thee was grass and other weeds that were over grown, making it look like a jungle mess.
We wanted to change the area, and be able to utilize squash as ground cover for in between each of the trees.
I found this great load of wood chips and have been slowly chipping away at making them all MY woodchips.
I've been unloading the chips on top of the organic straw and grass clippings in the food forest, and it seems to be working pretty good to keep the grass from coming through.
I need a lot more chips.
A few days back I unloaded a half a dozen loads of woodchips from the truck and covered the front row of the tress, or the row that's nearest the house. It looked pretty good, so I went to the row back and used the mower and weed wacker to cut down the grass/weeds and then covered them with wood chips. The next morning things looked REAL good.
Today when I went back to continue laying chips, I noticed that there was a lot of growth coming through the chips in grass form:
Here's a shot at the end of the night, the bit on the right is the original stuff I lay, the stuff on the left is moved chips onto paper that I rolled out to better suffocate that grass and have a more efficient ground cover. My hope is that with the paper under the chips the weeds wont break through. We can move some chips aside and tear a hole for our squash plants to grow here this year.
It was kind of a make-work project laying the first bit of chips before putting down the paper, but lesson learned. Will see if this paper makes the difference that we're looking for. I will keep you posted as usual!
It was a tiring day, we had a real nice view at the tail of the day:
Questions, comments, feedback - lemme have it!
Hope this note about ground cover is useful to you. Stay tuned, more mistakes to come! :)
Good morning, nice post. Use a lot of wood chips also around my farm. My wife loves them to dress up her multitude of flower beds. I am fortunate enough to live a country mile from a saw mill. They mill softwoods exclusively, mostly Northern Hemlock. I can get as many wood chips from them as I want. With pine wood chips you must be careful. For most applications pine chips should be seasoned for a year before using around vegetation that you are trying to propagate. I do use them in the same way for pathways and other areas that I have no plantings. In your post, I see that you mentioned having a problem with the deer browsing on the young trees. I have learned a cheap way to combat this. It is mixing a solution of eggs with milk and spraying it on any vegetation you want the deer to stay away from. Check out my post on TREE FARM IN SPRING. You can bet the particulars on the egg to milk ratio. Using this mixture has never failed me. You may want to try and you may be able to remove that fence altogether.
Thanks a bunch for the info on the egg/milk solution! I have shared it with some of the families in the church also, i look forward to seeing how it goes!
Have you got any solution for cabbage butterfly/moths?
Also, super fortunate to have a mill so near by! We have had several companies say they would drop off chips to us, but none of them have followed through. I suspect they will show up right after my last load of chips is unloaded From my truck! Haha
I've a similar but slightly different problem - we put some redundant topsoil on the terraced beds at the back of the house and I've discovered it is full, FULL, of convolvulus roots and suckers, which are very happy to be watered and sitting in the sunniest part of the garden and are growing beautifully through ANYTHING. I'm busy with a hoe most days, but they need lifting out as even the tiniest piece regenerates. I guess one hope is that it enters into battle with the bamboo that has escaped from next door and they strangle each other. Good tip about the paper, although my favourite broadsheet has just started printing in tabloid size - not such useful coverage as double the joins and overlaps. Those fields next to your property are a problem, aren't they - such divergent practices from yours.
The farming that goes on around us is not at all in tune with our goals. I try not to get so worked up about it (i get much more enraged by cabbage moths)! There's not a thing that i can do about it right now. Our next home, our final piece of land (we hope) will be more in line with our visions. We have made several friends lately just thirty kilometers west of where we are now: they some of them are already not spraying their crops - the other, their neighbor a farmer of about 350 head of cattle has gone no-dig and is decreasing the amount they spray. Finding those types of people to live by would be amazing.
Would be great to have a community of people farming with similar methods. I hear you about cabbage moths, here it's slugs. One warm damp summer we had so many that national newspapers started writing articles about the value of slugs in the cycle of decay and decomposition. No one suggested them as a food source, though.
I'm they're 'delicious' somewhere in the world! Haha
I had a post that i resteemed a while back about snail farming that was pretty interesting!
We have had slugs, more at our previous residence, but not ever a problem with them. Do they destroy the garden? My understanding is that beer is the answer to slugs? (Not to mention a million others;)
*Source: Pixabay.com
They do destroy the garden. They seem to be very partial to any plants we grow as food. Beer is probably the best option for anyone (me) that's squeamish.