Mr. Wright

I have had a similar issue. I live in an apt complex and they routinely hire a landscaping company to clean up the wastes. Well we have a few pine trees out here and I decided to compost it. I stuck in plastic bins, like others have suggested, however, I started throwing a bit of dirt and all of my kitchen scraps. I then weighted it down with a piece of cardboard the size of my bin and placed water jugs on top of it.

After about a month I had the bottom of the pine straw going black and heating up.

I would seriously consider the pine straw as a resource; mulch, bedding or filler in a huglekultur. It is too valuable to mess with in a compost pile.

Loved the videos. Thanks for posting them, it has me interested in picking up a scythe for the "lawn" and "orchard".

Feral wrote:
Pepper spray??? Skunk scent in a bottle???

I was a cop for a few years, and they always warned us that Pepper Spray, if it gets on their nose or into their airways will shut it up really fast. Pepper Spray was always considered last resort for us when dealing with dogs.

On the issue with the man with the Pistol, This is America, and he is on his property. I regularly go out with my shotgun, or if I'm going out to the woods I bring my .357. I personally see nothing wrong with carrying a firearm. From my time as a soldier to my time as a cop, I never once got scared when I saw a fellow citizen with a firearm. I assume the best intentions in people when I know they carry firearms. You know how the saying goes, Liars think everyone around them are liars too, same thing with saints.

You can easily build a trap (non-lethal) for those dogs. Id do that, bring back the dogs to the neighbors, or if you 'have to', to the sheriff/animal control officer. Once you settle things out, you have an animal trap for use on pesky critters.

Wanted to say thanks for commenting on my post.

I hate to say this, but I am in the crawl phase of my Permaculture journey. I am still learning.

The part of Tennessee that I have my eyes on is at the foothills of the Appalachians, which coincidentally is called "The Smoky Mountains" because of the excess of fog and low hanging clouds. Tennessee is very humid, especially in the summer. I think the average humidity is 65%.  While I doubt that I will ever plant a redwood that will exceed 150 feet, that is still 100 feet taller than the average oak in my area.

I don't believe in invasives. I don't believe in natives. Just opportunistic species that take advantage of of human made disturbances. Given time and permaculturist mindset all plants will fall into the rythym of the local ecosystem with the help of humans. I don't believe Tennessee has any law prohibiting the cultivation of redwoods. I doubt ultimately that the redwoods I want to introduce will find a niche in the ecosystem, since their existence relies heavily on forest fires for propagation.

Thank you guys so much for the information and time.

I do believe the redwood groves in NC is a gov't funded conservation. Or at least a group of like minded individuals.

A guild is a set of plants which work together like a mini ecosystem. So you have a nitrogen fixer, a nutrient accumulator, a mulch plant , etc. Its a way of looking at modules of plants and assigning them roles in their ecosystem. Obviously you wouldn't choose a slow growing oak to be your mulch plant, (one you would cut back 4-5 times a growing season) but it would be a great nutrient accumulator with the depth and breadth that its roots go.

If it were me, I would do three things:

Get up all that blighted vegetable matter, compost it thoroughly, and return it to the soil. I would say to use the J. Jenkins method of composting though, if you can  . This is all about Biodiversity and is a little extra work yes, however you are 'priming' the soil with good 'ole compost microbes. The spores, eggs, and seeds of undesirables will be purged while the compost does its magic.  Apply it lasagna method, or any old method you deem necessary.

If you clean up any woody plants, go ahead and pyrolyze them, Mix that compost 50/50 with some charcoal you just made let it set for a couple of weeks and then you have Bio-char.

Mulch, mulch, mulch. Mulch under the soil (hugelkultur) Mulch over the soil. Mulch as it breaks down over the years brings nutrients, retains water, provides humus, and beneficial fungi love to munch on lignin (the collagen like substance of the plant world).

Yes you can spot check the soil with this or that technique, but in a good permaculture system, just like in a working ecosystem, Soil is the Key. If your soil retains water, everything gets a hell of a lot easier. Biologically active Charcoal and Rotted Wood are great, low impact ways to get the soils starting to hold water. Once the soil is healthy, you will find that the plant diseases will be reduced to an acceptable level. 

Hello! I have been reading from this forum for a few months now, and decided to sign up. Have to say I have loved the wealth of information that these forums hold. I know I could introduce myself in other established threads, but there are a couple of questions that I needed to run by someone, how is that for function stacking? My love of forests originally started me on the way to permaculture so I figure woodland care would be a great place to post.

I recently read that North Carolina has three redwood (sequoia sempervivens) conservation groves totaling 400 or so trees (or more). There are Redwoods growing in Italy, which with its Mediterranean climate is much like Tennessee's hot dry summers and cold wet winters. This got me thinking, that I could actually plant redwoods and expect them to thrive. Now I did my research, and found out there are three different kinds of sequoia's, two native to the USA and one native to China. The one I would be looking to grow would be the coastal redwood. Does anyone have the experience with redwood forests? Cultivating? I'm not looking for whether or not the trees would grow in TN, I want to know people experience with them. Does anyone use one in a guild, or a guild of guilds.

What I'm thinking is along these lines. The redwoods, with enough water, will shed up to 30% of their branches in a growing season. Great for hugelkultur and biochar. I say both because I believe them both to be useful tools in the permaculture bucket. Their roots also inosculate with other redwood roots, which would be amazing to use as a way to connect fragmented guilds together in a food forest.  Being one of the few evergreen coniferous trees (windbreak and animal habitat in winter) that take well to coppicing due to it suckering and stump sprouting nature and the rot resistant wood could be used in any myriad of products. The Positives for this tree are legion, plus who wouldn't want to say they have a Redwood forest out back?

I foresee the drawbacks/ challenges being water related in Tennessee. The property it would inhabit would almost have to swale'd, pond'ed, and designed to catch and store as much incoming water as possible. These trees don't have massive taproots ( like most every tree out here in Tennessee) they have an extensive shallow root system designed to take advantage of flooding. One of the two things California has too much of, that and wildfires. This doesn't have to be a negative,  but a subtle biological nudge to place the tree in an area prone to flood deposits.

All I'm asking is some intel from the boots on the ground, the people who have gotten to see these giants in their natural habitat. Maybe, one day, you will hear about crazy old man Mr. Wright in TN, and his unorthodox redwood grove.