Since testing the soil, we have lots of prep work to do to get it ready for crops. It currently lacks nitrogen and phosphorus. So we are adding two sources of nitrogen into the ground to try to help with this. The first source of nitrogen will be from wood chips, though at first they may “tie up” nitrogen. Doing the reverse of what I want, consuming nitrogen. The heat that comes off mulch piles is that bacteria feeding on the wood, and consumes nitrogen. But this does not happen forever and eventually becomes a good source from what I have read. Luckily we do not need to plant right away, so with time the wood chips should break down.
Eventually the bacteria inside will slow down and top consuming it, and instead allow it to become a long term fertilizer for the soil. After years it will become a black rich biomass ready to be consumed by whatever crop it is planted in.
The second source will a more immediate source of nitrogen, we will take the hay from the fields and till it into the soil. The hay is no longer green so it would allow break down of nitrogen quite fast, compared to the wood chips which may take months to years.
So the plan is to collect scrub trees and grind them down into mulch for the fields, and to use the collected hay as well. Fixing the phosphorus will come in later by adding wood ash.
My property has some small trees growing along the power lines, a perfect area to collect wood from. As it would be cut anyways a few years from now by the utility company to keep away from the power lines.
Inside of these woods are some native black cherry trees I want to preserve. Up in the trees are edible berries. So by cutting down the trees around them. It would free up light and help them grow bigger.
Unfortunately one was cut down by mistake. Though we can take this opportunity to see all the berries that form on these trees. A couple were ripe and I picked them off to eat.
We were able to save around 6 of them, so its not a big deal one of them was cut down by mistake.
They go from a red color to black when ready, they have seeds inside but its not a big deal. They are more tart than sweet but I still ate a dozen or so of them.
I had no idea there were cherry trees out on my property until we started looking for them. I found noticing the flowers was a good way to notice them during the spring.
As we cut deeper into the wood it cooled down outside, the heat index was well into the 100s so it was nice having some tree cover before we cut them down.
My foreman was busy cutting down trees with me, we laid them down and come back for them later with the skid steer and its grapple attachment.
We selectively left the cherry trees, and hopefully they will be happy with much more light around them.
Taking a break to sharpen the chainsaw, and then got back to cutting more trees. I used a sawzall for most things small enough, and then my foreman would use the chainsaw for bigger stuff.
Piling up the tres so I can go collect them easily.
Cutting around twenty feet into the woods gives us lots of trees as the woods are very dense around here.
We wrap up the day and collect the power tools and go back home. But we will be back to collect the downed trees soon and feed them to the wood chipper.
With our source of wood in order its time to bring it over and start processing it. It will take a few trips to get it all over, we cut the trees down a few hundred feet from where the garlic field is. So each trip takes just a minute or two.
The grapple can pick up large amounts of wood at once, and make it easy to get it close to the wood chipper. We then feed it in by hand.
We take turns using the skid steer and trade off mulching. Bringing over the wood requires me to look under the grapple, and carefully put it down in place.
We turn on the wood chipper and get ready to feed in the wood.
I go back to collect more wood with the skid steer. I enjoy working in it, with air conditioning what more can I ask for.
When I am moving these scrub trees, they are still a good ten feet tall. And they stick out on both sides.
I need to be careful not to hurt those cherry trees I preserved while I pull out the trees we cut down.
It can take some shimmying to get them out, but we got the piles cleared from the woods.
A couple larger trees were also cut down, we placed them near the chipper and will cut them down into pieces to process into the chipper. And we can use some for firewood as well.
Most of what we cut down was smaller than this and went through the wood chipper without much issue.
We got two piles out of a few hours of work. But we will need much more. So we will keep doing this until we have enough to till into the ground. Along with the hay and ash I think that should help out with the NPK chemistry in the soil. Otherwise we may need to get some liquid fertilizers. But we hope a more natural approach will work as well.
Bringing back the wood chipper to the workshop my foreman backs it in.
We get the skid-steer and wood chipper put away. But soon we will use them all over again. We may need to do this 5-10 times before we have enough. So we will return to the power line cuts and collect more scrub trees from there for wood processing. Waiting on the garlic planter to arrive this is the perfect time to get the soil conditioned. But soon it will be time to plant them as well.
