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BabuFrik
Logs, wood chips & sawdust

Registered: 01/28/20 
Posts: 26
Loc: Kijimi
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Soil remediation with Hugelkultur, Ruth Stouts, a log with some C. squamosus, and Mason Bees
#26538916 - 03/16/20 03:51 PM (3 years, 10 months ago) |
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I have a gardening situation and was hoping someone out there might have some experience to share.
There was an old snag behind my garage that recently fell after some very prolific Dryad's Saddle decomposed the bottom. I just finished cutting it up with the chainsaw and laid it out along a 5 m2 section of soil that we have been remediating.
This soil patch is in front of a small, wooded, moist area that opens to a grassy field. The soil in the patch started as some loose clay/rocky fill. Over the last three years we have been building it up by turning in compost and spent substrates. Eventually we planted wildflowers and some veggies, and they have been doing about as you would expect with that type of soil.
We laid the newly segmented snag along the field-facing edge of the soil patch. The plan is to cover it over with some basic garden soil in a sort of hugelkultur-style. This will effectively expand the bed and add woody material to the soil for decomposition, and we should be able to plant there. We also thought about using the Ruth Stout method in that area, or maybe a combination of the two. Overall, we are hoping to expand the remediated section farther out into more of the fill, adding in more wildflowers to do our part for the bees, and maybe kickstarting the forest succession process. We were also hoping to start raising some Mason bees in that area.
That is about it! Just wondering if anyone has done something like this, or if you have some considerations to be aware of. We started some seedlings in preparation for spring planting and our frost window should close sometime around May 1st.
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Edited by BabuFrik (07/14/20 04:11 PM)
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Bowman
ranger



Registered: 01/18/20
Posts: 76
Last seen: 3 years, 7 months
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Re: Soil remediation with Hugelkultur, Ruth Stouts, a log with some C. squamosus, and Mason Bees [Re: BabuFrik]
#26549509 - 03/21/20 06:53 PM (3 years, 10 months ago) |
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Sounds like a rewarding project! If you are interested in helping native pollinators, as well as other invertebrates, I'd leave the log on the surface. While planning a pollinator garden we had an entomologist recommend adding logs to provide habitat for wild bees to lay eggs, hibernate, etc.
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BabuFrik
Logs, wood chips & sawdust

Registered: 01/28/20 
Posts: 26
Loc: Kijimi
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Re: Soil remediation with Hugelkultur, Ruth Stouts, a log with some C. squamosus, and Mason Bees [Re: Bowman]
#26553545 - 03/23/20 05:15 PM (3 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Bowman said: Sounds like a rewarding project! If you are interested in helping native pollinators, as well as other invertebrates, I'd leave the log on the surface. While planning a pollinator garden we had an entomologist recommend adding logs to provide habitat for wild bees to lay eggs, hibernate, etc.
It does give me a warm and fuzzy feeling to be working through this project and attempting to do what we can at our small level. Every season we are seeing what works and what doesn't and that is nice to learn. Everything is so dynamic and a lot of fun to work through.
We definitely want to expand the bed's leading edge and add more organic material for slow decomposition, so that woody debris is earmarked for below the soil. But we have some ash logs that did not take to the plugs from a few seasons ago. I want to over-inoculate those with nameko sawdust spawn, and they will sit nearby on the soil's surface or partially buried. Maybe those will help out?
We are also planning on building some bug houses, along with an interesting house for these Mason bees using recycled cardboard tubes. We only learned recently that they're more prolific pollinators and they don't really sting, so we will enjoy watching that project unfold as well. It really is fulfilling to do all this stuff, you know?
-------------------- If you are interested in trading mycology club tshirts, or want to help me buy one from your club, send a DM my way
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Mudbrain
Stranger

Registered: 03/05/20
Posts: 32
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Re: Soil remediation with Hugelkultur, Ruth Stouts, a log with some C. squamosus, and Mason Bees [Re: BabuFrik]
#26591664 - 04/10/20 05:45 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Super cool project! I'd love to see photos of/when you're able!
I've done some hugelkultur work, and have been wanting to try some Ruth Stout techniques for ages! I live in a pretty arid landscape, so our concern with the logs is soaking them before hand (usually in a kiddie pool) and then burying them, and then planning directly on top of that soil- again for us it's more about conserving water more than anything.
For bees, I was talking with a local bee keeper/conservation group, and they recommended keeping bundles of stalks from various spent "pithy" stalks (I ended up using last season's sunflower stalks) and placing them in vertical bundles around the garden as well as smaller (2' at most) horizontal bundles both at ground level and wired to a fence. I haven't seen any sign they're being used by our native bees, but it's also only been a handful of months!
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