Chop and Drop - PEP BB gardening.sand.chopndrop

one possible way to do chop and drop:

I chopped and dropped 5 areas with fruit trees, 1 paw paw, two cherries, and 2 peaches. There are also some new blackberries planted along the outside edge of the peaches.

Each area is about 4 ft by 4ft. The total area should be about 80 square feet.

I used a scythe, hand sickle, hori hori knife on each one, and a swing blade on the last more overgrown peach tree area. :)

Steve, I certified your BB.

And then I updated the wiki page to mention that usually you cut 3 square feet to make a smother-mulch for 1 square foot.  

Sounds good, thanks Paul.

Chop and drop weeds on the raised bed areas in my garden. Each row is 55 feet long, about 2 feet wide. I chopped and dropped one and three quarter rows so far. Your call.

I recently chopped down a couple of trees (weeds), in an area that I would like to see flourish with other vegetation. I limbed the trees. If I left the limbs there would this count as chop and drop for this particular BB?

Paul talked about that very subject this morning at the PEP1 event.  The impression I got was that the intended method of chop and drop is to use hand tools to collect green materials from an area relatively close to the mulch area and then apply them as needed.  Very thick to smother undesirable plants or thinner as mulch to protect and support soil life.

With that being said, if you have nitrogen fixing trees that you are pollarding or coppicing for chop and drop material, that fits pretty well with this concept.

In the case of a tree "in the wrong place", I'm guessing it would kind of satisfy the spirit of the rule.  Hopefully many more BB applications are made with plant material than with tree removal trimmings.

As long as I'm relaying discussion from this morning, mowing your lawn and using the bagged clippings at mulch doesn't count if it's a gas mower.  Maybe if it's a push reel hand mower.  Maybe?

I think that "chop and drop" in the broader definition would include doing this with trees.  But in the case of this BB, I am looking for something a bit simpler - generally cutting grasses and using the grasses to smother grasses and mulch desirable plants.   Of course, one might also cut things that are not grasses (knapweed, comfrey, prickly lettuce, snowberry, saskatoon etc.) and trees are also not grasses ...   But I think that withe bigger trees and branches, a brush pile would probably be a better use - and there is a BB for that.

I chopped grass from the Fisher Price home septic field and dropped it on a hugel I made today at the 2019 PEP1 event at Wheaton Labs.  The hugel is about 14' long at the base (due to being on a slope) and 7' high and the mulch covered one side and half of each end (well over 50 square feet).  I mulched it thinly (1-2") since I was protecting the soil from rain and not wanting to smother the seeds I just planted.