pete parker

Also just found this from Stefan Sobkowiak:

"Give the tree 4-5 years or 3-4 years of care to get it off to a good start then STUN. I made the mistake in one block of trying it from planting year and now have STUNted trees."

Mulch it is !!

William Bronson wrote:Mulch, then plant.
In my experience,neglect happens, no need to work at it.

Thanks. How much mulch do you like to use?

Yeah, I'm an expert neglecter.

Christopher Weeks wrote:You've already observed that access to woodchips matters in this calculus. But so does access to seed-stock. Quality chestnut and hazelnuts aren't free and when doing STUN, you might want to plant thirty times the number of trees you want. It seems like a tall ask when you're getting started. My approach is to start my own nursery with a little more care and devotion and once I have those trees producing seeds, I'll spread the planting across my acreage with more of a STUN philosophy.

Great points! I think I will do that. If Mark told us his survival rate, that would be nice. 1 in 30 seems kinda low unless you are working hard to kill them :)

Mark Shepard's approach is survival of the fittest.

Others recommend laying a large layer of mulch to get started.

I can currently get truckloads of chips from a tree guy, at no cost, so that makes the decision easier.

Seems like Mark's approach makes more sense, but most people say you need to start with some sort of biomass to feed.

I will be planting all sorts of trees, bushes, nuts, fruits, etc.... Probably just going to use swales for water. I get 14 in rain a year, so pretty arid/desert-like. Zone 4-ish

What is everyone's thoughts?

Josh Ellis wrote:Ron,
You've been given lots of great information already.    Keep in mind that context is INSANELY important here, a place with an average rainfall event of <0.25" on a regular basis has much different infiltration needs than one with 0.5-2" a few times a year.  Soil type obviously plays an important role: if you have eolian blow sand like much of Southern Utah where I live then keylining is pretty functionless, if you have heavy compacted clay it can drastically improve infiltration.

All that said, I recommend that you reach out to Chris Gill, he's keylined thousands of acres of creosote scrub down south of El Paso.  He swears by it in your region and says he has disrupted the creosote monoculture and gotten actual grasslands back using the technique.

He did a presentation at the Quivira Coalition conference a few years ago, here's a video he showed about his use of keyline on his 32,000 acre ranch:
http://circleranchtx.com/keyline-101-video/

There should be NRCS funding available to help offset the cost, check with your local office.  Again, Chris might have some good contacts with you on this front.  He also owns a plow that he might let you borrow!

As an aside, if you are interested in regenerative ag in this region I HIGHLY recommend attending the Quivira Coaltion conference in ABQ in November.

Good luck,
~Josh
Boulder, Utah

Permanent link in case the original ever disappears:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230927074707/https://pitchstonewaters.com/keyline-101-video/

I live in a similar climate and was planning a heat tubes system with off-the-shelf greenhouse, with insulated walls/ceiling, and walls that roll up for summer.

What factors in your design contributed most to the heat? and were cost effective?

E.g.

Horizontal insulating panels in the ground does not seem that useful because:  

"the total heat reaching the surface of the Earth of (1.8+0.0000058) = 1.8000058 watts/cm^2, only 0.0000058/1.8 = 0.0003% is contributed by the Earth's internal heat. This, of course, will dominate everything else if the Sun were to magically vanish!" - Source: Nasa

I dont have compost material, and prefer low management.



Cost:

"Phase change materials" - like glycerin cost $500 for 55 gallon barrel, so the net effect on temperature needs to be justified, whether 1 drum of glycerin or 10.


Etc....  There were a lot of moving parts, several which were not real clear from a non-engineer/builder.  

If your system did not stay above freezing at night (got lost in really long thread), or if I want to have a more tropical solution, I am thinking to combine with heat tubes.

Seems PFAF.org is pretty good. Are there other better ones out there?