Ward De Jongh

so i've been reading about the use of alder trees to grow funghi on, it is a medium substrate for shiitake mushrooms.
I live in a temperate climate and alder trees are pretty common here, but many people don't give a lot of attention to it because it hasn't got much direct uses.
However i recently bought a small piece of land and there are some alders present so i'm pretty eager to try growing shiitakes on them. Alder trees are nitrogen fixers too so they give that advantage when they are grown close to land in production.
They grow at a good rate and then i would cut them and use the stems to occulate the shiitake on, after 3-5 years the wood would be in a state interesting for composting, or maybe hugelkultur beds.
I'm eager to get started but i was wondering if maybe there was someone who has experiences or advice in this?

hey,

I was told that the wood needed to rest 2-3 months to let the funghi-resisting characteristics die off. I'm really no expert but i wouldn't worry to much.
Natural things don't count by the day :).

hey!

This sounds so great! i actually am a bit in the same situation only my piece of land is way smaller, only 1 acre. But since regenerative agriculture lies in my interests as well i am actually a bit jealous of your situation :D.
What i have found to be very interesting was digging in a bit deeper on the soil food web, an understanding on how your soil actually works made it (at least for me) easier to make the best decisions on how i would treat my litte piece of land. Tilling is actually a massacre beneath the ground surface, so i really wouldn't recommend that, as microbes and funghi support nutrient and water retention, soil structure, keeping pathogens at bay, enlarging root systems and many more. This would be destroyed just to make a sowing bed. I'd try to get the soil covered as soon as possible. the easiest way to do this is by doing nothing at all. Nature will start succession and the best thriving native plants will cover the ground asap. I don't know what your intentions were about your land yields the first years, but what i have done the first year is adding compost the places where i wanted to start growing some vegetableS and with the rest i barely interfered .
It is also very nice to get to know your land and after that, start designing, no matter what scale, you will always get a better idea of the status of your land if you let it be for a while.
A downside is a bunch of frowning neighbours though :D
However it can never harm to give your soil a push start, with adding compost or aerated compost tea, inocculating the soil with the bacteria and funghi that make the base of any healthy soil.
I can suggest the book regenerative agriculture by Mark Sheppard, it is a really comprehensible book about larger scale ecological farming methods, these ideas will surely apply to your land. Teaming with microbes by Wayne Lewis is also a comprehensible, yet pretty scientific  book about the life that makes up your soil and how to treat it right.

Hope this helps.

I would recommend to be easy with it, and would always prefer composted manure over uncomposted. Since manure is very high in nitrogen, your plants will take this up and will grow very intensely, that's why everyone is so keen on manure. However plants can only take up a limited amount of nutrients, and when nitrogen is overwhelming it, the plants cannot "digest" it and nitrates are just stocked up inside it.
I don't know if you are talking about an edible garden but when plants that contain alot of nitrates get eaten the nitrates in it will be converted to nitrites in your body. Nitrites are poisonous in high doses but can also be converted to nitrosamines, which can cause cancer.
Also the plants that are saturated with nitrates can't take up other nutrients needed, causing it to be highly susceptible to diseases and pests.
Other disadvantage of these high nitrate levels is when they end up in the watersystems. There they feed the algae who use up all the oxygen in the water, creating a shortage and killing most aquatic life.
I only use compost for myself but manure (especially aged) will do no harm if used in modest quantities, and on a small scale level.
Another thing you can try is to compost it in place, adding a carbon source (wood chips,twigs, cardboard maybe?...) and then watering it with aerated compost tea (you can look this up, alot of DIY methods to make it in an unexpensive way.) This will spark your microbial life, they will get to work and decompose the organic matter and stabilize, releasing nutrients to the soil in a balanced way.
Hope this was helpfull and not too rant-y

thanks for the tips, i guess it will have to come down to bunkering them down. Neighbours were already offering traps to get rid of the foxes, which i won't use because apex natural predators are worth more than a small dozen of domestic chicken. And new foxes will move in in the new available territory anyway.
Other things i came across were scent based repellents like your own pee and stockings with human hair in them. But i might try to raise a pig with the chickens since their smell will also help warding off the foxes and apparantly they can be aggressive towards predators as well. Time will tell, worst case scenario is just not keeping the chickens if nature decides they don't thrive in their environment...

So, i recently bought this piece of land and installed a big chicken ren, the day after i went to check how they've spent their first night in their new habitat. Well, one died already, apparantly a fox already found his way to the new preys and killed one. (paw prints and bunch of feathers were clearly visible)
I searched the internet and only came up with the solutions of transforming your ren to a bunker or repelling them with scent or sound, while the next site i come across already claims this as not working.
I don't want to use snares or traps to catch the predator as wildlife means more to me than a couple of chickens. I prefer the more natural way and this would be to implement animals that could ward off the foxes or creating more interesting and easier food sources.
I read that dogs could do the job but since this plot of land is further down the street from where i live it's not really possible to put a dog there. So has anyone got any other suggestions or experiences with deterring foxes?

hey,
if you don't like the chop and drop method you can use them on your compost pile and use other mulch or compost to cover your ground.
Just remember to cut them from the ground and leave the roots in, because peas are nitrogen fixators and when you cut it that's when the roots (or the bacteria actually) give the nitrogen back to your soil. Which is beneficial for your high demanding melons.

Ever tried plantnet? It's a free mobile app that can be used to determine plants just by taking a picture.

hey,

first of all i want to suggest you make some pathways and define your beds, your soil looks like it is indeed pretty heavy clay, so compaction is your enemy.
Make your beds so that you can reach every part without having to step on it. (120 cm width is about the standard, or try keyhole beds?)
The compaction can also be buffered by adding organic matter, which will create the aggregates you want.
The fact that it was already grassy is a sign that soil nutrients aren't too bad, otherwise there would have been much more weeds like thistles and such.
But since your soil is mostly clay this isn't a guarantee that soil life is already healthy, because clay can also chemicaly bind water and nutrients.
So adding organic matter and keeping your soil covered like you are planning to do is indeed a good idea. But try to keep the digging and tilling to a minimum.
I'd save up the manure to add around the squashes, as they are pretty demanding veggies:)

Hey, i think the soil disturbance of the pigs is indeed a natural thing but only in the right balance, so i guess it's a matter of adjusting the numbers to land.
I haven't got any experience in this myself but i have read about pigs being rotated in a chestnut orchard to eat the fallen nuts. Here the extreme soil disturbance was also a problem so they gave the pigs noserings, this greatly diminished the problem as the pigs stopped rooting and just scavenged the surface.
This is a practical solution so i'm letting any potential ethics aside, however the pigs don't suffer from it, according to the farmer.