Grow a shed?

Dec 01, 2022 08:45:43

Has anyone tried to grow a shed? Probably ideally using black locust. Plant the outline posts. Graft the branches together between trees to form wall supports for later dirt fill. Pollard the wall trees back at wall height and bend fast growing rods for roof late season. Kill off all sprouts up so only laterals and down aimed branches grow. Grow till strong enough and then earth berm/sod over everthing?

Dec 01, 2022 17:45:27

There's a thread somewhere here on permies where people tried to grow a small house. They were trying to get roots to do the job, so they covered the inside with wood at the start, used a tree that rooted easily - I think in the willow family - and earth-bermed from the beginning.

I've certainly heard of fences grown, and even weird shapes like chairs. It takes patience and planning to make sure you get branches where you want them, but I don't see any reason that it won't work. The issue will be whether you get it tight enough that you don't have dirt coming through cracks to the inside, although depending on what you want the shed for, that might not matter. However, I'm not sure how dry you will be able to manage with it - I'm thinking more like a root cellar than really dry storage. That may be because I live on the Pacific Wet Coast - nothing's dry in the winter here!

Dec 01, 2022 18:21:49

I don’t know if locust pleaches. You want something that does pleach. You also need an awful lot of time
to wait for that shed.

Dec 02, 2022 21:17:49

C. Letellier wrote:Has anyone tried to grow a shed? Probably ideally using black locust. Plant the outline posts. Graft the branches together between trees to form wall supports for later dirt fill. Pollard the wall trees back at wall height and bend fast growing rods for roof late season. Kill off all sprouts up so only laterals and down aimed branches grow. Grow till strong enough and then earth berm/sod over everthing?

I've never heard of it, but I've imagined similar things. But then I wonder if it wouldn't be easier, faster and more functional just to build the structure you want from polewood or lumber. And it probably would be. Making a roof formed from living sprouts that's water tight seems like a particularly challenging prospect to me. I've seen a number of different artistic arborsculpture structures but the creators never seem to try to turn them into finished functional buildings.

But you should totally try it!

Dec 03, 2022 04:47:27

This might be called "pooktre" or tree shaping.

Here are some threads just for the fun of it:

https://permies.com/t/38438/art-tree-shaping

https://permies.com/t/4436/Strange-True-Unusual-Artistic

https://permies.com/t/76526/art/Living-Flora-Buildings

https://permies.com/t/38158/art/Grafting-art

Dec 03, 2022 09:44:23

I found the link I remembered reading:

https://permies.com/t/27725/Photos-growing-eco-buildings

Yes, they built a "dome" style frame and in-filled the inside. Then used in the order of 60 poplar branches to root and provide for the permanent structure. ?When I originally read about this 9 years ago, I wondered what would happen if some of the trees died, as poplars in my area are a short-lived tree. However, now that I've read about coppicing, I'm wondering if the tops of these trees were coppiced on a schedule, could/would their lifespan be significantly extended?

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