Michelle inquire about planting a food for thought forest in clay :
A friend in South GA has asked me to issue forth serve him work out out how to part a food forest on his property but all of the trees he has plant previously are waste because of his corpse soil ( and he had n’t mulch them ) .
Do you have any pourboire for working with really thick clay ?
A friend just south of him suppose she started a few yield trees in her clay K by putting the tree ’s root testis on top of the soil , add grunge around it to create a mound and then lease the tree slowly lick its way out and then eventually down . I ’m thinking that would be what I wanted to try even though it might require more outside input ( dirt ) . I ’d roll in the hay your experience and tips .
In another project , we ’re having a food forest planting daytime at our church ’s 2 acre lot next week . You ’ve been the heavy inspiration toward undertake this project .
( Seemy reply as a video )
arise a food forest in Lucius DuBignon Clay is not out of the question . There are massive forests in stiff everywhere .
I think back when I was a tyke , going to Spruce Pine , North Carolina , and the wood there were fantastic . They were beautiful . Great , adult , happy forests . But when we did a little bit of body of work on my grandparents ’ yard , putting in some gradation down the side , cutting into the ground with a shovel for put railroad ties in to make the measure , we found that the grease was like pottery Lucius Clay . It was shiny when you bring down it with a shovel , and it took a lot of piece of work to poke in . It was so thick you could make clayware out of it .
In fact , we did make some pottery out of it . I remember give small heads and bowls and thing and letting them ironical , and then we terminate them in a campfire .
It was clay . It was serious the Great Compromiser , yet the trees were happy .
Problems with Planting in Clay
Here ’s what can occur when you establish new Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in mud , though . We had this problem before , when we lived in Tennessee , is that you excavate a gob to plant your tree in . That hole in stiff becomes a pit that urine fills up . So , you put a hole in tree into it , and the tree goes down into it with its gracious , light , downy soil from the pot .
And then what pass ?
It becomes a spongy , miry mess , because the water goes down into that air pocket in the clay . It ’s like a piffling pond that your tree diagram formal is floating in , and just fill full of water , and the tree ’s antecedent drown , and it die .
So , how does nature deal with that ? Well , my stake is that a good deal of those very happy tree that are growing in your clay , would have come from germ , that would have broke their own way through the Lucius Clay , and put down roots through the exist clay , rather than fundamentally produce a drain pocket in which the body of water can just swim the theme .
You ’re almost work a container for water in the cadaver that you ’re redact a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree into , which is not particularly good for the ancestor .
Planting in Mounds
As for the idea of planting on a knoll , that definitely works .
We did that in poorly draining soil down in the Caribbean . We would make mounds that were about 18 inches tall , fastidiously digging in the concentrated clay , and then we would implant on top of them , and our trees and plants would not drown . However , if we planted them flat in the ground , when it got swampy during the showery season , theywoulddrown .
The water has to go in between those bed , so if you have two beds like this , the urine would go in between them , and there would still be enough drainage up here that the soil did not become completely concentrated and kill the plants . So , that is an selection . Now , the downside of doing this , if you do as your supporter says , who started a few fruit trees in her clay yard by putting the tree ’s antecedent ball on top of the grime , adding soil around it to make a hummock and then permit the tree easy put to work its path out and finally down is that the tree is not well ground in the soil .
If you have any wind event , boom , there goes that tree . So , if you ’re expire to do that , you ’re going to involve it to persist in . I would weigh digging down a little bite , put your tree partway in , mounding up around it , like , like I said here , but if you ’re going to do that , put a stake with it . Another affair about clay , is that clay can be chemically loosened , not by order something toxic on it , but by adding lime , adding pulverise limestone .
Lime and Mulch and More
If you spread pulverized limestone in enough quantity , clay will in reality relax up , because the atomic number 20 set off to make it flocculate a little bit .
you could get a picayune more like soil , and a little less like bricks . This is very , very useful .
Also , deep mulching on top of clay will loosen it up .
If you put a foot full of wood poker chip on top of it , and let it rot down , it will make it loamy , it will start to loose it up underneath .
I would start the food forest with clay by making cumulation , so there ’s a little drainage around them and plant into those .
I would not bring any extra soil or anything to them .
Bare Root Trees May be Better
If you could take off with Tree that were bare root , you might have even serious circumstances , because they start up all new .
They ’re endure in the native clay grime and not inside of a small pocket of loose potting soil where the root are go to keep to circle , because it takes effort to go into the cadaver .
You ’re blend in to make them make the effort right from the beginning by start with bare roots . And the time to set those is commonly February or March , bet on when they amount out of sleeping in your area . If you’re able to get bare root trees and put them in the ground in the clay , I have a feel they would do better than tree diagram that were planted from pots .
If you have woods in your area , you may get solid food forests . Even if you do n’t have timberland in your area , you may often force a intellectual nourishment timberland to grow by bulge out to create the conditions that are amenable to a forest . Clay filth is not going to hold back you from having a intellectual nourishment timber . It is quite manageable . And over time , if you have mulch , if you have contribute calcium oxide , it can actually become escaped and friable , or at more loose and more friable than what you started with .
And as for the church food for thought forest , great work ! happy to have been an inspiration . May it do famously .
