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Living a life that requires no vacation.
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OK, alternatively, have you considered putting a hardware cloth tube at least 6 ft in diameter around each of the trees and planting inside it to soak up the extra nitrogen - or a combo of comfrey and something else, and then undoing the tube for 48 hours occasionally to let the girls in to decimate whatever's grown?I've been trying to avoid rotational grazing, I like the chickens to have a lot of room to roam. And I'm not sure how quickly I'd be able to get plants to grow in an area before letting these ladies in to quickly decimate them!
I'm not sure what "straw hay" means, but if it is a straw that has been harvested after seed heads such as wheat or barley have been removed, that's what you're looking for. Alfalfa hay is normally a high nitrogen animal feed, so I agree you don't want that. Looking at the ground in the picture, I would definitely want to see more wood chips there if you can get some.am I correct that straw hay is good carbon to add (as opposed to alfalfa grass hay?).
I was actually surprised that it happened to me, and it happened in more than one place. Then I was doing some reading about the best materials to use in humanure composting, and it suggested that leaves, particularly large ones like we tend to have (Big Leaf Maple) have that tendency compared to wood chips. My solution is to take my garden fork and use it like a broad fork - push it in, wiggle it back and for, then pull it out so that I'm not mixing the soil, but I am letting some air get down there. Fact is, this happened after a *really* wet Oct/Nov/Dec last year, so maybe less intense wet will be less of a problem.I'm guessing that my ladies are aggressive enough in their scratch and peck skills that I won't need to worry about leaves getting too matted and anaerobic.
Have you been pruning these trees? I've read that pruning when there's no fruit can actually stimulate the tree to put out more growth (think, the deer came and ate some of me so I'd better grow big fast). Hopefully one of our wise fruit tree members will notice this thread and comment!But they have lots of green vegetative growth and I've been wondering if this is again due to high nitrogen in the soil.
Visit Redhawk's soil series: https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil
How permies.com works: https://permies.com/wiki/34193/permies-works-links-threads
Visit Redhawk's soil series: https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil
How permies.com works: https://permies.com/wiki/34193/permies-works-links-threads
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