Chris McKenney

Thanks James, that's great to know.  I have a packet of dried fungal innoculant I've been keeping in the fridge to add in minute quantities for perennial plantings.  I think I'll add some to my latest batch of tea just before application.

I'd love to make a mushroom slurry and dilute for application.  We have the beautiful and enchanting  Ravenel's stinkhorn around here during our wet springs which could be good for this as well.

Any tips for application?  I use a simple pump-sprayer for the compost tea and it needs to be quite free of particulates in order for it to function well.  I've tried just dumping the tea on, but I end up soaking a small area and going through it all without evenly distributing it over the entire bed.  I'm guessing the mushroom slurries are thicker and wouldn't work with a pump sprayer.

Completely agree, Artie.  We're still working on building our land's fertility which is why we went with the purchasing route.  Long term I'd like to keep our property as closed-system as possible, though I'll likely keep having free wood chips dumped here.

The main remediation method we're using on the beds is copious amounts of compost tea - apparently the microbiological activity can really help speed the breakdown of persistent herbicides.

Hopefully this reaches some people that may have been just as confused about their plants as we were.  McGill composting, who is a supplier for many compost distributors in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel hill area, has issued a statement about perisistent herbicides being present in their certified compost.  We dug several new beds using this compost this year and saw stunted growth and death in many of our plants.

McGill's statement - https://mcgillcompost.com/persistent-herbicide-ph-statement
Sample pictures of plant effects and what to do if you're affected - https://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/tainted-compost-affects-growers-in-north-carolina/

Our luffa is out of control.  The left side and the top/front of the arch is all one plant!

Also known as White method, or planting by the blueprint

I’m still in the early stages of planting out my food forest - so early that I don’t have any new trees in the ground yet.  While listening to a podcast, my wife ran across the “Ellen White” planting method for trees from the podcasts of this blog - https://www.azurefarmlife.com/farm-blog/2019/5/29/tree-planting-like-a-boss.  The resources I’ve examined have universally boasted extremely impressive growth and fruit production.  I’ve done some cursory research on the internet, and there are some variations on the process.  I’ve added them all together (roughly) below so we can examine each step from all of the different instructions I found.

Dig a 3’x’3x3’ hole, separating the topsoil from the subsoil

Take a few sections of 4” drain tile, plug the ends with stones and place them in the bottom of the hole.  This is called a “breather,” and is to trap oxygen down deep for use by soil microorganisms.  PVC pipe, old cans, etc could also be used for this purpose.

Fill the bottom foot of the hole with a mix of equal parts topsoil, peat moss, and compost (also referenced leaf mold), then add 5 lbs of rock phosphate and/or additional gypsum and/or additional dolomite.  Other additives have been referenced as well - sea salt, kelp, molasses, biochar, alfalfa, etc.

Add a thin layer of small stones, like gravel.

Add a large rock (with a little soil on top), and spread the roots of the tree over the top of the rock.  Face the low angle of graft union of the tree to the northeast in the northern hemisphere (away from the afternoon sunlight)

Add the last foot of the mix referenced earlier, and throw a bunch of earthworms in with it

Cut both ends off a tin can, cut in half lengthwise, and wrap around the trunk of the tree

Mulch with an inch of compost and 3 inches of leaves.  Plus more stones “if desired"

Use any remaining subsoil to form a berm around the tree 6 to 9 feet in diameter

Water.  A lot.

Let’s take these steps one at a time.

Dig a 3’x’3x3’ hole, separating the topsoil from the subsoil

That’s one big hole!  My back is aching already.  Seems like a good step though - I can’t think of a reason not to dig a hole this big except for the work involved.  I’d also be a bit concerned about soil settling with a hole this big, but I think if you make sure to gently compact as you go, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Take a few sections of 4” drain tile, plug the ends with stones and place them in the bottom of the hole.  This is called a “breather,” and is to trap oxygen down deep for use by soil microorganisms.  PVC pipe, old cans, etc could also be used for this purpose.

I’m undecided on this one.  We all know roots and microorganisms need oxygen to survive, but trapping air at the bottom of a hole?  I’m not completely convinced that the holes in the drain tile won’t get plugged by soil over time, or that the oxygen can even permeate to any reasonable degree out of the pipe.  Also not thrilled about putting plastic in the ground.  I guess aluminum cans wouldn’t be bad.

Fill the bottom foot of the hole with a mix of equal parts topsoil, peat moss, and compost (also referenced leaf mold), then add 5 lbs of rock phosphate and/or additional gypsum and/or additional dolomite.  Other additives have been referenced as well - sea salt, kelp, molasses, biochar, alfalfa, etc.

Seems good in theory, but I’m undecided.  My understanding has always been that the hole you plant trees in shouldn’t be significantly amended with bulky things like peat moss and compost, as that encourages the tree roots to just grow into those more nutritious areas, and causes them to not spread out in the soil.  On the other hand, a cubic yard is a pretty big area for the roots to grow into.  I think that the additional amendments (rock phosphate, gypsum, etc) are likely to be more dependent on the area you’re planting in, but if you’re replacing 2/3 of the soil in the hole with outside material, I’m not sure about this either.  Biochar certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Add a thin layer of small stones, like gravel.

Skeptical of this one as well.  From what I’ve read, this is explained away as having to do with electrical currents, ion exchanges with the rocks, or directing electricity into the tree somehow.  I could see this providing additional nutrients as my understanding is that roots like having some rock content in the soil so they can mine minerals, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if this would really make a difference.

Add a large rock (with a little soil on top), and spread the roots of the tree over the top of the rock.  Face the low angle of graft union of the tree to the northeast in the northern hemisphere (away from the afternoon sunlight)

I’m torn on this one too.  Putting a rock right under the base of a tree?  That will certainly provide a solid base for the tree to sit on, and would prevent it from sinking down.  If you have a fruit tree with a very lateral branching structure, it might not interfere with the root system.  I definitely wouldn’t do this with a taprooted tree though.  Facing the graft angle away from the afternoon sunlight is supposed to help prevent sunburn on the trunk of the tree.  I don't know if sunburn would actually be a concern, but I don't see a reason not to do it either.

Add the last foot of the mix referenced earlier, and throw a bunch of earthworms in with it

Sure.  Fill it up!

Cut both ends off a tin can, cut in half lengthwise, and wrap around the trunk of the tree

Or do a wire cage for deer.  Other people have also buried these for gophers/voles.

Mulch with an inch of compost and 3 inches of leaves.  Plus more stones “if desired”

Dunno about the stones here, but mulch is certainly good.  I would probably use wood chips too for a more “forest floor” type litter.

Use any remaining subsoil to form a berm around the tree 6 to 9 feet in diameter

This would probably be dependent on your area for the amount of precipitation you get.  I’d probably skip it in my area.

Outside of these steps, I the only additional thing I would add is a mycorrhizal slurry to the tree at planting time to get the fungi cranking.

Taking the time to write this out and think about the individual steps, I think there’s a lot of good stuff here, and also some things that are questionable.  Regardless of whether or not each individual step works, the results are hard to argue with.  Since I’ve yet to start planting trees, I’d of course like to do everything I can to make them grow as quickly and healthily as I can and have them be integrated into a larger permaculture ecosystem.  I’d be curious to hear other’s thoughts on the method overall, as well as the individual steps, especially those that are more well versed in soil science than I am.  Also, please note that my list above is not any specific formulation of Ellen White's method - it's just one that I created by compiling steps from different resources.

References:
http://www.timeandbeing.com/application/CountryLiving/EGWTreePlanting.pdf
https://www.azurefarmlife.com/farm-blog/2019/5/29/tree-planting-like-a-boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUaviX9xuwo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G09VwtN-00
https://highbrixgardens.com/phocadownloadpap/pdf/Fruit%20Trees%20On%20Steroids.pdf
http://www.thetomatoproject.net/about-us/project-history

Looking to plant a screen of pine nut trees in my area, but I haven't found one that'd be happy yet in my climate.  Zone 7b, AHS heat zone 7/8.  Hot, humid/dry summers, Wet winters.  Nut pines either seem to want hotter and dryer, or colder.  Colorado Pinyon and Mexican Pinyon seem like potential candidates (from here - http://tcpermaculture.com/site/2013/11/13/permaculture-plants-pine-trees-for-pine-nuts/z0), but they're both right at the edge of tolerating conditions here.

Did you have any luck with this, Margie?

Trace Oswald wrote:
Application rates is still very much an ongoing topic.  To complicate things further, I have seen growth tests that show some plants grow best at 10% biochar, some at 20%, some at 30%.  The good news is, that unless you are making truly enormous amounts, I think not having enough is going to be a bigger concern than too much.  For a starting point, I think I would try to get to 20%, and maybe test some areas with more.

After reading this, I realized I've spent an excessive amount of time trying to figure out application rates by comparing studies, and I think the right approach is more in line with your methods.  Basically I need "a lot".  I'm thinking my approach for my new garden beds will be to do the same prep I have done before, with the addition of broadforking in a lot of biochar from the surface as deeply as I can.  Since I'll be in a position to make additions to several beds over several years, I think that an experimental approach is the way to go rather than try to figure it out from other studies so I can determine what is a good (or good enough) rate.  Basically doing what the literature already says to be doing :)  This may be a good future topic in this forum.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:hau Chris, I do believe that the rates of decay you mentioned for pinus species was for intact trees, which would not particularly be the same for char made from those trees.

Hello Redhawk, I completely agree.  The standpoint I was looking at this from was whether or not to leave the whole pine trees on the forest floor after cutting them down and allowing them to decompose there.  Compared to the sweetgums and other hardwoods that I have been chopping and dropping, the decay rate is slower, and why they're my main candidates for biochar.  The sweetgums may not break down much by the time I want to focus on an area more, necessitating cleanup, but that's fine as I can always turn it into biochar later.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:
Now if you were doing the partial burn off, such as the way they make the charcoal for BBQ and Grilling, you don't have pyrolyzed wood, you have partially carbonized wood, because there are still many contaminates present, that weren't burnt off in the making of charcoal.
The differentiation is important since charcoal will deteriorate at a faster pace than pyrolyzed woods would, the contaminates are what cause the difference in decay rate.
...
I wouldn't worry so much about getting that pyrolyzing heat into the downed wood as much as I'd work to get it all partially burnt, then broken up into small chunks and spread over the soil (the smaller the chunks the better this works).

Once you have the char spread over the ground, you can inoculate with microorganisms with compost additions and or mushroom slurries.

This is interesting.  I've seen a lot of YouTube videos that people describe as making biochar, and the trench method is the one I'm planning on using.  The people there frequently describe "good" biochar as having a non-greasy feel, a sound and brittleness like glass, and completely blackened throughout.  It sounds then like these characteristics alone are not enough to determine if the wood has been fully pyrolyzed, but if this is not vital, I won't worry about getting the higher temperatures for now, but building a retort or TLUD in the future could be a fun project.  I'm planning on innoculating any biochar I create before I spread it, though I have to admit I haven't done much research yet on compost tea or mushroom slurries.  

Travis Johnson wrote:
My own tests on making biochar with pine at significant scale (1 full cord) ended dismally. It either fully burned up to ash, or just scorched the blocks of wood, but did not produce biochar.

Travis, are you sure you're not Mad Max?  That picture is badass - flames and bulldozers go well together.  I'm wondering if the problems you encountered were related to the size of the pieces you were using, some of them look quite large in that photo.  Point taken though - if you need that much biochar to treat a field, producing tons of it just isn't feasible, especially if you'd need to break it down into smaller pieces.  I'll be interested to see what my experience is like with using pine - hopefully it doesn't all burn before I can get it to char.

Phil, that's an interesting chart.  If I'm reading that right, pine's persistance in soil does decrease with lower charring temperatures as Redhawk mentioned, but it still sticks around for quite a while and the difference isn't too great.  What does the class column indicate?

It’s been a year and wanted to post an update on progress.  First, some observations and reflections from the past year.

Getting a scythe has been a major help around the property in general, but I was kidding myself with scything that field.  By the time I got out there, the dogfennel was taller than I was, and I made it about 50’ over a few days and ended up injuring my shoulder trying to chop through the stuff.  Bought a bush blade after that, but wasn’t able to move nearly fast enough to get through it with the time I had available and the shortening days of autumn.  Working all day and scything at night and on weekends just wasn’t sustainable.  Ended up hiring a guy to bushhog it that fall.  Unfortunately, he came when the field was a bit wet and ended up with more ruts and compaction.  Joy.

I got a tractor over the winter so I could do the mowing myself and for other work around the property.

I continued reading through the winter and decided to follow Mollison’s described chisel plowing in a keyline plowing pattern.  The idea is to use a chisel plow or subsoiler to plow progressively deeper lines into the soil over time, minimizing overall soil disturbance, allowing plant roots to grow deeper and deeper, increasing water infiltration, and pulling organic matter deeper into the soil.  We have about 500’ deep clay before we hit bedrock, so I wanted to carve as deeply into that as I possibly could to assist future tree root growth.  There was a good amount of surface runoff from the soil as the main field is on a modest slope, and we get very dry in the summertime so it made sense to do this to store as much water as possible in the soil.  Doing this in a keyline system made sense as well as it would slow the water as much as possible and channel it to the ridges before it exited the property.

I opted for this strategy for a few reasons: money and time.  I decided not to use any soil amendments as I didn’t want to spend the money on them or the implements needed for spreading, and using the keyline plowing technique, I wasn’t sure how much they would penetrate into the soil anyway.  If anything, they would probably have washed down into the lines the subsoiler left and concentrated there.  Not something I wanted to deal with.  The subsoiler was surprisingly inexpensive - a single-tine plow that could go down 22” was under $200.

Keyline plowing was a fun experience and I learned a lot (i.e., made a lot of mistakes).  After marking the keyline and plowing above and below it, I realized that the lines themselves were getting quite off-contour.  The fields I plowed have some funny changes in elevation and quite a few obstacles that I think caused a lot of the lines I plowed to go too far off-contour.  I had to mark new keylines in areas where I felt that I wasn’t plowing in the right direction, and decided to just do the best that I could since I figured the lines cut would help with water infiltration regardless of whether or not they were perfectly following the keyline system.  Definitely a case where application and theory don’t quite match, and I met somewhere in the middle.

Since the fields had a lot of obstacles, I often had to stop plowing, negotiate the obstacle, and start again.  This quite often resulted in me driving over the top of lines that I had just plowed, recompacting them.  The compaction was not as bad as before it was plowed of course, but I cringed every time and it made for a bumpy ride.  I also ended up plowing myself into a corner quite often, or finding myself surrounded with areas that had been plowed, and needing to say the hell with it and just plowing some lines to get it done.  If you look closely in the pictures attached, you’ll see some interesting areas. 🙂

I couldn’t find any information on how close to make the plowed lines, so I opted to make them a tractor width apart.  This made spacing easy and I could simply roll the tires next to the previously plowed line.  This may have been a mistake - more on this later.

Plowing these fields took about 16 hours over two days (long weekend), and I was very proud of myself for doing all of the work quickly, right before a predicted week of rainstorms.  Anyone else in NC?  One thing I’ve learned since moving down here is that the only weather report you can trust is the one you give yourself when you’re standing outside.  No rain at all that week.  Hot and dry.  Since that time (Late July), we’ve had one significant rainstorm, which I’m not sure was a great test of the system since it was only a couple inches, but I didn’t see any runoff to speak of.  Needless to say, all the vegetation a foot to either side of the the plowed lines died.  The vegetation has come back somewhat, and the large lumps of earth that came up when the plow rolled through have settled some, but it’s still pretty lumpy.  I’ve mowed once since then (again, right before a rain that didn’t come), and I did it between the contour lines so as not to compact the plowed lines.  Will definitely be sharpening the mower blades this winter, but at least the really big clay clods got whacked into oblivion by the mower.

One thing I’m still trying to figure out is how to make my next pass with the plow.  At this point, I’m not going to do it until the spring to give the plowed lines more time to settle, but I’m not sure if I’m going to try to re-mark the key lines or just plow in between the previous plowed lines.  The massive oversight I made with making the lines so close together is that to plow between them, I’ll neatly drive right over the top of the previous lines, recompacting them.  I’m giving it until spring to allow time for roots to get down there when the plants finally get some water, and assume that the compaction that occurs when I plow again will be offset by the cracking of the hardpan and the organic matter that presumably made its way down there.

I've recently been reading a decent amount regarding biochar and its applications and I'm curious about people's thoughts on my future management strategies.  The majority of my land is oak-hickory-pine forest that is predominantly overcrowded with sweetgums and pines.  I've been slowly thinning the woods with the primary goal being to improve forest health, and secondary goals of transitioning the forest to being principally deciduous and slowly adding food forest trees and shrubs as gaps appear.  I've been cutting down the larger undesirable trees and bringing them to the floor, minimizing damage to desired trees as much as possible with the thought being that the decaying above ground trees will add to the the organic matter of the topsoil, but I'm thinking about modifying this strategy to produce biochar from the pines that are felled for other uses.

There are a few reasons for this - from the research I've done, conifers take significantly longer than hardwoods to decay in a forest setting (See here for models of decay rates of various trees), making them a more obvious candidate than the hardwoods for biochar.  The hardwoods can remain on the forest floor to directly build the topsoil (of which there's only an inch or so), and provide more habitat for fungi.  In my observations, fungi colonize the fallen trees quite quickly, and in areas termites have been assisting as well.  The areas that I've thinned already have a good amount of wood cluttering the floor, so I'm hoping to speed the rate at which it clears up by removing the pines.  Lastly, I'm a one-man operation.  The fewer trees I need to drag out of the woods the better so I can focus on the thinning work instead.

The biochar I'm planning on utilizing for plantings in other areas - gardens and tree plantings in a field that I'm converting to a food forest as well.  From what I've read, biochar is quite effective at improving soil quality in acidic ultisols in tropical regions, so I think the acidic heavy clay ultisol we have in the Piedmont will benefit as well.  One thing that I've been wondering about is application rates.  The rates seem to vary widely depending on the soil type it's applied to, and most recommendations are for extensive field testing in an area before attempting to determine a broad rate of application.  Many of the studies I've read imply that over application of biochar can have negative effects as well.  Does anyone have any experience with this in the Piedmont or surrounding regions?  I'm also curious if people are knowledgable about using pine for biochar - it's been unclear from what I've read if the parent material for biochar has a significant impact on the quality of the biochar itself.

Thanks!