Jesse Ray

s. ayalp wrote:Please don't leave them. Whatever you bury will eventually come back to the surface and become a hazard. Instead of corroding away some of those nails will corrode into very long, thin and very sharp shapes. Those are a lovely invitation to some nasty cuts and, at worst, to tetanus. Instead of burying, you can burn that pile and use the ash in the garden. It will be very easy to remove nails and metals from it by a magnet.

That was the original plan until I realized Hugelkulture, hence the dilemma.

Burn nothing is supposed to be my new motto.. so....

Thanks for all the replies. I’d rather not spend all the time pulling them...I don’t anticipate that level of soil ever being disturbed, negating the issue of exposing dangerous objects. I’ll pull the newest looking nails that held the corrugated greenhouse material as they have a rubber ring on them, but the rest I’ll leave. Many have rusted substantially already.

I have an old shed that was pushed down and now I have a pile of wood from it. Most boards still have nails in them. I’m wondering if it’s ok in the bottom of beds. Besides the obvious risk of sharp objects, are there other negative issues with leaving them in. I would be burrying them in the very bottom of 5 ft mounds. Thoughts?

All done with the first beds. Something tells me the bay is too dense or maybe has too much strong smell (pepper wood) but I’m just going to keep using it until it’s all buried. Fingers crossed.

Would love to hear from anyone who has used Bay wood just to reassure myself.

Thanks!!

I was able to remove the ferns from the lower bed as I hadn’t added the final layer of soil. We’ll see if anything performs different.

I added about a pound and a half of worms and seeded a cover crop, so done for now!

Can’t wait to watch them change!

On to the next one.

Jan White wrote:You've got a wide range of materials in your beds, probably lots of fungi and microbes, so this might not be an issue for you, but those ferns you're using look like bracken.  Bracken has ptaquiloside which has allelopathic effects on other plants.  It's a very tough plant.  The ptaquiloside is released from rhizomes, stems, and leaves as they break down.  Three years in, there are still some plants that just will not grow in our soil where bracken was cleared - mostly root crops and ornamental bulbs.  Fruiting plants like tomatoes and squash were fine right from the start.  Our irises struggled on pathetically and this year started to look okay.  Our soil is extremely poor to begin with, so you may not have any problems.  I'd go easy with it though :)

Oh dang... well I didn’t put a ton... only about an inch or two layer underneath the maple leaves. Hopefully the chicken compost and worms I’ll be adding can help to them break down into something more inert. 🤞🏻

Added a layer of ferns and maple leaves plus some alfalfa meal before the final layer of soil.

Coming to life

That’s great! I cut a large group of bay to make light for the garden and was just curious because it is so aromatic. I love the smell of the wood! Good to know it can all end up feeding the land and me! It does seem like it’ll probably degrade slowly because it’s  so dense, I put it mostly in the bottom half of the beds.

Raised up the terraced mushroom wall with some material gained from last years slash pile.

Also added the last layer of fine sticks which will be covered with soil, ferns, maple leaf, tall grasses, and other green waste

Final stage will be planting a cover crop with a mulch layer of straw and fine alder chips plus King Stropharia mushroom inoculant.