posted 5 years ago
Hi Daniel.
Fungi are your best decomposers. Winecaps are apparently the most forgiving wood eaters out there. Oyster mushrooms are likewise voracious, but I don't have a clear idea if one is better than the other in your situation.
To avoid the "I just had a tree removed" look some despise, I would look to fast-growing tall annuals. Russian Mammoth Sunflowers come to mind. I have grown them to over twice my height in Toronto, Ontario, so I think you might be able to manage it in Pennsylvania. There are other options, and you can do many tall annuals that can do a variety of things, from feeding pollinators and attracting predatory insects to growing sacrificial crops that drop seed on the ground at harvest for scavenging birds and growing pretty biomass for haylage, silage, or mulch.
You might also consider if your soil will support alfalfa and comfrey, and consider adding those. Comfrey is a nutrient hyperaccumulator, and alfalfa drops tap roots six feet or deeper and loves to break up hardpan. I could see the root systems following the dead maple roots down, opening the dead organic matter up to air and water, and accelerating the cycling of organic matter into soil.
Lastly, I would think about what will end up there ultimately. There is no point in transitioning to a prairie analog system (or microsystem) if you're just going to plant another tree there; it would make sense just to keep it in winecaps, comfrey, alfalfa, clovers, and sunflowers, or whatever will grow in pockets of soil in a mostly woodchip mix until there's enough former woodchip more easily recognisable as soil for you to plant your forest guild. You might, in fact, start with winecaps and your forest guild understory.
If, however, this spot is to become pasture, you might look to a prairie or savannah analog, including some of the grasses, big and little bluestem and indian grass, for instance, that you might not want to see in an intensive garden setting.
Please let us know how it goes. I would love to see pictures. Good luck.
-CK
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein