hugel type question

i am going to have a lot of small evergreen branches that i'll be trimming off the bottoms of our evergreen trees, i was wondering if they would rot well enough to put in the bottoms of the beds..are they the type of wood that i'm looking for? or won't they work very well?

I thought they would be a good type of wood as they are a soft wood..and smaller branches..some with needles on them and some deader.

they would be red and white pine and hemlock mostly ..maybe some spruce but most of the spruce are still healthy at the bottom.

in the past i have mentioned i have a lot of aspen too..that will be going into the beds..and possibly to build the beds from..i know they rot very quickly  esp if they are in ground contact..the insides will rot out very fast leaving just the bark shell..and they get very light to lift after laying on the ground for a while..it is such a wierd feeling lifting one thinking it will be heavy and there is just nothing left to it..

i have read plenty on the buildling of the beds but not really sure about the pine and helmock..is all..thanks for responses.

Can't lots of pines produce pollution? Pines produce resin that produces turpentine is that why they can polllute so8ils' that is what i imagine and is that when you have lots of logs piled up in one place that they become a problem?

rose macaskie wrote:
Can't lots of pines produce pollution? Pines produce resin that produces turpentine is that why they can polllute so8ils' that is what i imagine and is that when you have lots of logs piled up in one place that they become a problem?

The right sort of fungus will have no problem digesting terpenes. If pines have been living and dying in that soil for a while, chances are very good that the soil includes at least one sort of fungus with that ability.

It might be best to use the pine at the bottom, though, so that the roots from above have a buffer while that process takes place.

  joel hollingworth, what you say sounds logical but the only reason i mentioned that pines can pollute the soil is that i read it somewhere so obviously tupentine treating fungi, mushrooms or toadstools  don't always get to where they are needed. It is an interesting question. If they don't get where they are needed why not? I don't know.

  Maybe paul Stamet's petrol eating oyster mushrooms have been specially trained by him,  As you probably know, he trained another mushroom to break down a VX toxin or some part of vx toxin by first getting the mushroom he was using used to it and then reducing the funguses other food supplies , so it was or learn to break down VX molecule and useithe  component parts of the VX molecule as food or starve, so you would need his strain of fungi to get rid of VX toxin at anyrate not just any member of the family of the same type of mushroom he used.

   He does not say he had taught an oyster mushroom strain to clean up on petrol though, so it would seems he used a normal one. If he used a normal one it would be logical to suppose that it would get to a turpentine filled spot on its own. They used to grow just beyond my garden.

    He seems to think if you have mixed bags of mushroom mats growing in sacks full of wood chips they will filter out pollutants, air born ones i think it was. He tried blowing cigarette smoke into a fungal mats that grew in his petra dishes when he was a student or young investigative scientist and was suprised by how much smoke they could  take. I think a fungal mat, a small household one at anyrate is what grows on top of a can of food if you don't throw it away or put it in the fridge or grows on a tetra brick of juice. If  you handle the sheet of fungus that grows on the top of fruit juice, something i never used to do till i read Stamets book, it is quiet tough and papery, i have not tried to find out how much smoke it can take without turning into a dead fungal mat. I think it is aqlso fungal mats that block my sink, tha t is a possiblility that dnever ocurred to me before i read Stametts book.
   Paul stamets  would be able to answer these questions i suppose. agri rose macaskie.

rose macaskie wrote: so obviously tupentine treating fungi, mushrooms or toadstools  don't always get to where they are needed. It is an interesting question. If they don't get where they are needed why not? I don't know.

I don't know, either. My two first guesses would be insufficient water, or too much competition by bacteria. If it's either of those, I believe the conditions Brenda intends to create will solve the problem.

Do you recall the context where you heard about contamination being a problem?

I did a quick search, and the best I came up with was this paper by Misra et al., which found that soil microbes from deciduous forests were just as capable of digesting turpentine as microbes from coniferous forests. Over-grazed  pasture land like you frequently talk about, though, would probably not be nearly so rich in microbial life.

Joel hollingsworth i think the over turpentined ground was in heavlily logged place, i can't cheque that out i don't rememer where i read it.

  Paul Stmets talks of a competition between remediators with different organic cures  to clean up soil full of petrol in some place that had dealt with a lot of vehicles, mending them or somthing, so had a soil full of petrol. Different people bringing their different cures, and the oyster mushrooms were the outstanding winner. Your information that microbes work means the question is do oyster mushrooms then just work that much faster. seems the most logiical. is that why Paul Stamets did so well. 
    Anyway Paul Stamets says that with fungi you haul in all the other remediators, the bacteria that eat the dead musrooms and the flies that lay eggs in these and the seeds which the birds that eat the maggots leave in their dejections which starts to grow in the oyster mushroom cleaned soil.
    Of course its much more complicated growing mushrooms than just letting the bacteria deal with it. i would have thought that in normal situation your bacteria are enough of a remediator and in situations that have an awfull lot of oiil you had better get in your oyster mushrooms. agri rose macaskie.

Joel hollingsworth , If you read about the chicago alleyes clean up they talk of natural remediation to different types o ffilth. pahtogens from the dustbuns and petrol from vehicles .
  Obn problem is hta tif the rain water that washes over alleys or whereever with contaminantes on the surface is taken straight up by a drain then this dirty water is carried unstrained and untreated to rivers that aaround the great lakes end up in the great lakes dirtying these.
  in normal circumstances, ie, a world without humans, contaminants woudl drain through the earth and then things like plants and fungi and microbes, bacteria and such that live in the earth at least the roots of plants do though the top half does not, would eat the pathogens and undo harmfull molecules as they digested the substances they took up from the earth and the earth hold some harmfull metals so they did not all end up in the lakes or rivers or seas.
  In the chicagos alleys clean up, which was talked about on cnn but is also described in articles in th internet because of the many innovative and modern ideas that were included in the projet. 
    They decided to have permeable pavements so the water ran through the pavements and permeated the ground instead of connecting the run off to the city drains., They seeded the gravel under the paving with things that cleand up the water, your bacteria i suppose and they also had some rain gardens planted at the edges of the alleys with hardy plants for plant remediation of pollutants, petrol and germs, gardens that would take up run off and treat it .
    Rain gardens are an idea that people who live round the lakes use for rain water run off so as to filter it instead of sending it dirty into the lakes and you can read about them in the internet if you look up rain gardens .  they are used in other places too. agri rose macaskie.