@@paulyounger1190 it’s wild that most orchards, even organic and biodynamic, just pile up prunings and burn them! And then import nutrients. Of course the big long term question is always about pest and disease buildup. I believe that if all the material is really broken down well and essentially cold composted on the ground it will favor a healthy microbial community and not disease, but much of this is still uncharted territory.
@@jkochosc Agreed! I'm psyched to see your explorations and results, thanks again for sharing. I am doing some similar ramial mulching experiments on second year mixed orchard rows. I was a little skeptical at first, but I came out at night one time to observe and I heard a rustling noise and looked down and found dozens of huge earthworms that were crawling all around, pulling on the prunings, trying to drag dried leaves off the to their burrows. There are also visible burrows all throughout the rows now, with little bits of leaf stems and stuff sticking out. My branches are still holding up quite a bit though, I think I need a deeper pile like yours to help break down the ramial wood though. Either way, the possibility of converting prunings to in-situe worm castings with only living systems and a bit of manual labor is awesome.
@@paulyounger1190 the size of pile is key - it has to be big and compact enough to lock moisture in all year long. If you can get it to that depth it breaks down in months not years. Great to hear about your experience!
Honestly I think people get too hung up on the pathogen carrying capacity of dead wood in orchards. A lot of saprotrophs and pathogens are also important endophytes that just express different habits depending on context. There are exceptions - I wouldn’t recommend mulching with fireblight prunings. But generally healthy plants should be able to handle proximity to their own dead tissues IMO
@@sambonney4608 totally agree. They are right to worry if they scatter some prunings around and the wood has moisture but also air and drying cycles, like not even enough moisture to decompose leaves. In that case you are building disease potential. But if it’s actively composting and full of life, I feel like it’s very worth it. But with the caveat that I am not a commercial seller of retail fruit! I think I will be one day, but only if this strategy works. If not, I will have to figure out some processing thing instead. In a way it is uncharted territory - I don’t know of a single northern operation that really uses their pruning wood in this way. Flail mowing in the row middle is quite different. This row of apples is a very good test because they are all varieties with very little resistance to scab, rust, or fireblight 🤣. They are 7 years in the ground and have moderate scab pressure, but this year I won’t get any information because the spongy moth took off the entire crop. Still not convinced this is a good context for apples - the pears are happy though!
Mugwort is an awesome her to cut for biomass as well. I’ve been in systems where all kinds of artemisias were used as the medium layer to surprise weed and for cutting.
@@jakob497 yes I have been working with it here for a decade - my farm was and still is covered in it. I find that it doesn’t actually produce that much mass. It looks like a lot and grows 6’ tall but you make a huge row of it and in a few weeks it’s just gone to almost nothing! Not as good as grass from what I’ve seen
@@jakob497 I looked up yields and it looks like 4100kg per hectar dry matter yield which is pretty decent, I guess I was wrong! I may be biased because it’s very very spreading and very hard to control so maybe I’m not as much of a fan of it as I should be!
@@jkochosc where did you find this data? Sounds like a cool resource. I just want to establish it in my tree rows along with all the other medium life cycle ground covers like comfrey (b14), horse radish, sun choke, cardon, estragon, wormwood,sage… it’s nice at surprising the grasses, and I think diverse living cover is preferable to a decomposing one if it’s not to much work. In the end it’s all subjective, right :)
@@jakob497 I would highly recommend against mugwort in the tree row. I have been managing mugwort around trees for a long time and if you aren’t on top of it multiple times every season, it will really stunt your trees. I have learned that the living cover should end at least a foot or so away from the tree row, and that space is for mulch - from the biomass row and from the tree row pruning as well. The trees need a bed of decomposing lignin on top of their roots to reach their peak.
How big a pile are you thinking to get the desired depth so the ramial wood can break down? Im guessing in a tropical or subtropical context they have the moisture and heat from a long growing season to break down whatever ramial support species theyre working with. But in the northeast i could imagine a case where the branches dont make enough contact with the ground to break down or some does and not all. In any event i appreciate you documenting it. Pioneering ain't for the faint of heart!
@@seanhoward3531 roughly I think it needs to be 18” high and 24” wide minimum. Ideally larger. If you make one check after a few weeks and see what’s going on in there. It should still have moisture and be starting to decompose. If it is drying out too deeply into the pile then you need more! Can cover with herbaceous material too to help lock in the moisture.
@@peterellis4262 yes, in this case it depends on the species. Anything that is in the biomass zone will be coppiced, pollarded, or otherwise pruned until the row of planted trees overshadows the biomass plants. There are a few trees that I will leave and encourage like a nice shagbark, cherry, black walnut. I find this kind of approach gives me better results because of the intensive accumulation of material. Even by next year you will see the herbaceous grows around the accumulated line start to grow twice as fast as the “robbed” area, and all that fertility Will be going into the trees as they get their start in life. As the biomass alley gets continually cut, I will be frost seeding in grasses and legumes to start pumping out more biomass and the cycle continues!
@@heavymetalpermaculture I have absolutely nothing against goats - I’ve had them in the past but don’t now. However, I have done calculations and found that hazelnuts can outproduce any milk animal in terms of calories, fat, and protein produced per area. This area will one day be pecans, walnuts and hazelnuts along with the fruit trees that are here. Maybe one day I will graze some sheep underneath the tall trees - that will be a lovely retirement plan!
I think your method is brilliant! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for this video! More like this!
@@RachelSalzmancircusdance thanks! more like this in what sense?
nice to see some NE syntropic style, im curious to see how this area ends up developing next season. thank you!
@@paulyounger1190 it’s wild that most orchards, even organic and biodynamic, just pile up prunings and burn them! And then import nutrients. Of course the big long term question is always about pest and disease buildup. I believe that if all the material is really broken down well and essentially cold composted on the ground it will favor a healthy microbial community and not disease, but much of this is still uncharted territory.
@@jkochosc Agreed! I'm psyched to see your explorations and results, thanks again for sharing.
I am doing some similar ramial mulching experiments on second year mixed orchard rows.
I was a little skeptical at first, but I came out at night one time to observe and I heard a rustling noise and looked down and found dozens of huge earthworms that were crawling all around, pulling on the prunings, trying to drag dried leaves off the to their burrows.
There are also visible burrows all throughout the rows now, with little bits of leaf stems and stuff sticking out.
My branches are still holding up quite a bit though, I think I need a deeper pile like yours to help break down the ramial wood though.
Either way, the possibility of converting prunings to in-situe worm castings with only living systems and a bit of manual labor is awesome.
@@paulyounger1190 the size of pile is key - it has to be big and compact enough to lock moisture in all year long. If you can get it to that depth it breaks down in months not years. Great to hear about your experience!
Honestly I think people get too hung up on the pathogen carrying capacity of dead wood in orchards. A lot of saprotrophs and pathogens are also important endophytes that just express different habits depending on context. There are exceptions - I wouldn’t recommend mulching with fireblight prunings. But generally healthy plants should be able to handle proximity to their own dead tissues IMO
@@sambonney4608 totally agree. They are right to worry if they scatter some prunings around and the wood has moisture but also air and drying cycles, like not even enough moisture to decompose leaves. In that case you are building disease potential. But if it’s actively composting and full of life, I feel like it’s very worth it. But with the caveat that I am not a commercial seller of retail fruit! I think I will be one day, but only if this strategy works. If not, I will have to figure out some processing thing instead. In a way it is uncharted territory - I don’t know of a single northern operation that really uses their pruning wood in this way. Flail mowing in the row middle is quite different. This row of apples is a very good test because they are all varieties with very little resistance to scab, rust, or fireblight 🤣. They are 7 years in the ground and have moderate scab pressure, but this year I won’t get any information because the spongy moth took off the entire crop. Still not convinced this is a good context for apples - the pears are happy though!
Mugwort is an awesome her to cut for biomass as well. I’ve been in systems where all kinds of artemisias were used as the medium layer to surprise weed and for cutting.
@@jakob497 yes I have been working with it here for a decade - my farm was and still is covered in it. I find that it doesn’t actually produce that much mass. It looks like a lot and grows 6’ tall but you make a huge row of it and in a few weeks it’s just gone to almost nothing! Not as good as grass from what I’ve seen
@@jakob497 I looked up yields and it looks like 4100kg per hectar dry matter yield which is pretty decent, I guess I was wrong! I may be biased because it’s very very spreading and very hard to control so maybe I’m not as much of a fan of it as I should be!
@@jkochosc where did you find this data? Sounds like a cool resource. I just want to establish it in my tree rows along with all the other medium life cycle ground covers like comfrey (b14), horse radish, sun choke, cardon, estragon, wormwood,sage… it’s nice at surprising the grasses, and I think diverse living cover is preferable to a decomposing one if it’s not to much work. In the end it’s all subjective, right :)
@@jakob497 I would highly recommend against mugwort in the tree row. I have been managing mugwort around trees for a long time and if you aren’t on top of it multiple times every season, it will really stunt your trees. I have learned that the living cover should end at least a foot or so away from the tree row, and that space is for mulch - from the biomass row and from the tree row pruning as well. The trees need a bed of decomposing lignin on top of their roots to reach their peak.
@@jakob497 hero.epa.gov/hero/index.cfm/reference/details/reference_id/6979420
How big a pile are you thinking to get the desired depth so the ramial wood can break down?
Im guessing in a tropical or subtropical context they have the moisture and heat from a long growing season to break down whatever ramial support species theyre working with. But in the northeast i could imagine a case where the branches dont make enough contact with the ground to break down or some does and not all.
In any event i appreciate you documenting it. Pioneering ain't for the faint of heart!
@@seanhoward3531 roughly I think it needs to be 18” high and 24” wide minimum. Ideally larger. If you make one check after a few weeks and see what’s going on in there. It should still have moisture and be starting to decompose. If it is drying out too deeply into the pile then you need more! Can cover with herbaceous material too to help lock in the moisture.
@@jkochosc gotcha. Thanks!
I wonder if it would make sense to pollard some of the trees you're using to produce your biomass?
@@peterellis4262 yes, in this case it depends on the species. Anything that is in the biomass zone will be coppiced, pollarded, or otherwise pruned until the row of planted trees overshadows the biomass plants. There are a few trees that I will leave and encourage like a nice shagbark, cherry, black walnut. I find this kind of approach gives me better results because of the intensive accumulation of material. Even by next year you will see the herbaceous grows around the accumulated line start to grow twice as fast as the “robbed” area, and all that fertility Will be going into the trees as they get their start in life. As the biomass alley gets continually cut, I will be frost seeding in grasses and legumes to start pumping out more biomass and the cycle continues!
Great content. I can't seem to get my machete sharp enough. :(
@@joshua511 I just use a bench grinder with relatively quick passes so it doesn’t get super super hot
So much food for goats though...
@@heavymetalpermaculture I have absolutely nothing against goats - I’ve had them in the past but don’t now. However, I have done calculations and found that hazelnuts can outproduce any milk animal in terms of calories, fat, and protein produced per area. This area will one day be pecans, walnuts and hazelnuts along with the fruit trees that are here. Maybe one day I will graze some sheep underneath the tall trees - that will be a lovely retirement plan!
Chop and drop ;) Sometimes it's worth being organized about it ;)
Hey, when will my oder be ready for pick-up? Email from 7/26
@@JoyoftheGardenandHome sorry, any time! Will email you :)
You hard to watch because we’ve been doing this for hundreds of yr. And you make it long an difficult
But we do appreciate ur videos for the other to see