lee martin

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since May 02, 2015
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Recent posts by lee martin

So I had to cut a Red Oak tree down on my property that was 30+ years old. Instead of burning it up, I decided to keep it on the property, buried under raised beds.

The beds are 3' x 12' each.


I used a back hoe for the excavation but put all the dirt back by hand so I could get it in all the crevices. (although I admit, probably not as good as it could have been done).

I covered up the stumps just enough before adding a layer of brush


I started to add in a layer of grass to add nitrogen but this was a pain in the butt so instead, I thought I would do cover cropping with nitrogen fixers instead. (after the first round of garden plants)


Here is the final stratification layers. The top 5" layer is a mixture of 50% sifted chicken manure compost 25% peat moss, 25% sand, 5% (approximately) rock dust. The middle 4-5" layer is the wood chips and large chunks sifted out of the compost. And then of course, the native soil underneath (which is heavy in clay)


I imagine this is going to settle quite a lot. Does anyone have any tips on what they would have done differently? I still have a whole lotta tree to bury. Kinda dreading it though since 1 bed took about 10 hours start to finish to complete.
9 years ago
wow, thanks for all the fast responses. I'll get right to work investigating all these links. Hopefully I can even partake in the sharing of resources sometime in the future with cuttings and seeds and such.
10 years ago
Hello, I have been researching Forest Gardening for about 5 months now. Spring really snuck right up on me and now one productive month has already past and I still don't have any plants in the ground. I have Gaia's Garden, Edible Forest Garden Vol. 2 and Ben Falk's book as well (though the title escapes me at the moment).

So I'm ready to start planting, but having a look around the internet nurseries I quickly realized a problem. I cannot locate any of the plants that I want to purchase. I have access to a neverending supply of cardboard boxes so my plan was to do some sheet mulching (and downsize the amount of grass I have to mow; 2 acres). I want to create landscape island guilds using this method but I cannot find any nitrogen fixing ground covers or any of the other plants for that matter. Comfrey, Chicory, Vetch, Clovers, etc, etc.

So where do you all get your plants from?

thanks for any links and resources you can provide.

10 years ago