Making Dirt

[jgp12000]

I have some low wet spots on the land & started filling in with dead trees & limbs.If you guys watch "Homestead Rescue" Marty Rainey does this so why buy dirt? Some of the logs disintegrate when I tap them with the bucket others may take awhile to rot.

[Keta]

It will work however when they break down you will have to put more in to come up to grade.   If you add lawn clippings and ground up leaves it will break down faster.  I mow the leaves to break them up and with the grass mixed in they are garden ready compost in less than a year.

 

[Alan M]

I suggest researching: Hugelkultur.

Documents what both of you are doing.

[Midway Tommy]

Adding fertilizer/nitrogen to the raw leaf and grass clipping piles will help them deteriorate faster. No matter what anyone tells you, though, there aren't a whole lot of nutrients in tree rot/saw dust, but they will help keep the termites away from the house. 

[Keta]

Wood promotes fungus growth and fungus helps break down the nutrients in the soil so plants can use them. 

Biochar helps hold moisture and slows down nutrent leaching.

[Swami805]

There's not nutrition in green waste except for carbon, the most important building block for life. Keep it up, your soil will thank you for it

[JasonGotaProblem]

Can I suggest picking one spot out of the way and digging dirt from there to fill in the rest, and then filling that one spot in with whatever and not worrying about it.

[foakes]

Can I suggest picking one spot out of the way and digging dirt from there to fill in the rest, and then filling that one spot in with whatever and not worrying about it.

Great idea, Jason!  Best, Fred

[jgp12000]

Sure

[Keta]

There's not nutrition in green waste except for carbon, the most important building block for life. Keep it up, your soil will thank you for it

Alfalfa, clover, buckwheat and several other plants  add nitrogen to the soil.  Aspen trees do to.

When we had sheep we heavily mulched our soil with moldy alfalfa and had a massive composit pile.

[oc1]

A swamp or bog is just a low spot in the terrain that keeps filling up with organic matter and water.  Once the wood and leaves are waterlogged the decay microbes use up all the free oxygen and the rate of decomposition declines dramatically.  Some decay organisms can operate at a much reduced rate as long as they can scavenge oxygen from things like nitrate of and sulfate but they soon run out of these things as well.

All this is why you have to turn a compost pile to keep decomposition going.  This is also why a swamp or bog is the very best place to preserve wood for millennia so it can be dug up later by archaeologists.

[Benni3]

A swamp or bog is just a low spot in the terrain that keeps filling up with organic matter and water.  Once the wood and leaves are waterlogged the decay microbes use up all the free oxygen and the rate of decomposition declines dramatically.  Some decay organisms can operate at a much reduced rate as long as they can scavenge oxygen from things like nitrate of and sulfate but they soon run out of these things as well.

All this is why you have to turn a compost pile to keep decomposition going.  This is also why a swamp or bog is the very best place to preserve wood for millennia so it can be dug up later by archaeologists.

I can put microbes in a 5 gallon bucket of rain water with blackstrap molasses and aerator in 24hr there multiplying but after 48 they run out of nutrients and there swimming in there own waist,,,,

[reelynew]

I suggest researching: Hugelkultur.

+1 for Hugelkultur.

[Keta]

I am lucky when it  comes to "dirt". Our irrigation ditch gets filled with excelent soil I have to dig out ever other year.

[Benni3]

I'm getting ready to start on my garden soil,,,, adding coco core,peat moss,perlite,cracked corn,oyster shell and when the temperature breaks planting white clover to help keep weeds out,,,,