I was just thinking about putting stuff in the ground. I'm sure it's been talked about a lot, but I thought I would seek out feedback on an application. You mentioned one way of going about it to stop rot would be to char the pole before putting it down. I seen this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRQ2e3b8-o
Go 25 minutes in, I don't think there is a faster way of doing something like that. It's almost instant.