woodchips

[Guy Meilleur]

Re: GOOD point, Nicrosis

Originally posted by Tree Machine
Yessir, Nickrosis. That 'robbing' of nutrients that Nick refers to is called 'nitrogen draft'.

Catchy phrase, I'll remember that. Good points about N, but some soils are not lacking in N so benefit greatly from bioactivity from dead wood chipped. Consider after all that the process imitates nature, dead branches falling onto the rootzone and crumbling apart. Many of the same fungi that form mycorhizal associations also decay wood.

And yes adding N imitates nature too; mankind removes many animals from their yards so it makes sense to fertilize, to replace what they have kept out.

 

[Tree Machine]

some soils are not lacking in N so benefit greatly from bioactivity from dead wood chipped. And yes adding N imitates nature

You're right. If there is already ample nitrogen in the soil, chips provide plenty of phophorus and potassium as the other major nutrients, and then all the minerals that are locked up in the wood is eventually 'unlocked'. Cellulose is, of course, the carbon source, which will eventually be liberated either as carbon dioxide, or taken up into the cells of the microscopic menagerie feeding and living there on the chips.

You could say that adding nitrogen 'imitates' nature, but it's actually catalyzing the natural process. I'm specifically talking more about a chip dump site, moreso than what you might put at the base of a tree. Like, if you want to deliberately bioconvert 100 tons of chips into rich, loamy humus for use in gardens, it pays to supplement with nitrogen along the way as the pile grows. Bioconversion will happen so much faster. Plus, the 'soil' you end up with is better balanced for the needs of the plants you'll be planting in it.

This is just biology. You may sneer for whatever reason at supplementing a chip pile with the cheapest source of (recycled) nitrogen available, but to a fungus, nitrogen is nitrogen. It just needs N so it can assimilate it's own amino acids and proteins and such.

Fungus is natures primary decomposer when it comes to wood. Like any living thing, it needs to have its nutrients there in adequate proportions to thrive fully. By supplementing your chip site, that's all you're really doing. -TM-

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Originally posted by Tree Machine
This is just biology. You may sneer for whatever reason at supplementing a chip pile with the cheapest source of (recycled) nitrogen available, By supplementing your chip site, that's all you're really doing. -TM-

Sneer? Not me, your chip site is a sight for eyes made sore by scraped, infertile earth. We have chickenhouses here and I've used their byproducts in my piles too.
Soilbuilding on human-ravaged tree yards often means starting from scratch--chicken scratch, that is.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I thought Urea was from urine.
Here's a link to how they make urea commercially: http://www.simplotcanada.ca/page.cfm?docid=67&bv=3
Lots of Natural Gas.

 

[Lumberjack]

Originally posted by Mike Maas
I thought Urea was from urine.
Here's a link to how they make urea commercially: http://www.simplotcanada.ca/page.cfm?docid=67&bv=3
Lots of Natural Gas.

There is actually more urea in your sweat (by volume) than in your urine.


Carl

 

[Tree Machine]

--chicken scratch, that is.

You are so funny.

Making Soil from Scratch . By Jack Chicken.

INGREDIENT & DIRECTIONS
1. Get chips.
2. Get a 50 pound bag of urea.
Spend the next 10 or 20 loads of chips rationing that bag out.

Someone had a question about What the heck IS urea anyway?

I thought Urea was from urine

Urea IS from urine, from that of all birds, mammals, and reptiles. It is a breakdown metabolite, from consuming protein. Protein is made up of amino acids, so when a living, breathing eats protein and digests it down to free amino acids in the blood, your body breaks the amino acids down into a short carbon thing, and an amino thing. The body oxidizes the carbon thing into ENERGY, and the amino part must be excreted, gotten rid of, metabolic waste product. Buildup of which is Toxic. Two free amino groups meet up, and pair, into urea.

SO, a diet high protein is going to be a urine high in urea. When John Paul Sanborne fires up the grill, and consumes three kilos of Porterhouse steak, you gotta know, his pee is fertile.

I diverge. Let's move from Sasquatch Piss to Chicken $hit. Speaking generally about birds, and specifically about a CHICKEN, there is no urine. Inside a bird is a recto-bladder thing called a cloaca say it Klo- A- Ca, and here in this magical place, poop gets mixed with pee, and then gets squoiked out.

Such is the life of a chicken. The life of a laying hen is our bioreactor for urea, and eggs. In hen houses, you might have a million chickens on site, laying one egg a day. You need to feed that bird enough protein for it to be able take apart the soybean protein, and with those amino acid building blocks, create a very high-quality protein, the egg white, albumin.

The chicken needs to get rid of all amino NH2's floating around, and the kidneys pull urea, water, and all other waste metabolites out of the blood, and every now and then, Squoik.

Multiply that amount of bird poo times X# of times a day a chicken poops times a million. That's the daily output of urea from one egg-laying operation. Think of the scale of how meny henhouses there are, farms that have this stuff as a waste product. Chicken $hit.

Chicken Poo is collected in giant tanks, the water evaporated and pumped out to create tiny white pellets, bagged into 50 pound bags, and used industrially in all kinds of things. Especially fertilizers. Urea has an N - P - K ratio of 46-0-0. In other words, all nitrogen. Very soluble in water. Very, very cheap.

Stimulating exchange about the offerings from a chicken's butt, while still staying on-topic about making dirt. It's kind of sad, in a way, that my life has come to this. -TM-

 

[ORclimber]

Someone's nets are getting full, here are some issues from bobthebuilders post yet to be addressed .


Most of the nutrients in the tree are held in the leaves not the wood.

Some wood contains diseases that should be hauled off site to prevent infection of other trees, not chipped on site.

I'm no entemologist but the only "maggot" I can think of that eats other bugs is ladybug larvae, haven't noticed them in the soil.

 

[Dan F]

D*mn Jim, you're making me remember stuff from soil science classes in the distant past.

I don't have much to add other than if you are going to add urea to your piles, it needs to be mixed in fairly well and not just dumped on top. Nitrogen volatilizes fairly readily and quickly, and if it's dumped on top then you have no gain.

Urea is the basis of all nitrogen in every commercial fertilizer.

Mike, if I remember right (I could probably find my file for that soil science class and check...), a lot of the process of "fixing" nitrogen using natural gas produces amonia, which is nitrogen with three hydrogens attached, NH3, with the 3 being subscript....


Dan

 

[Tree Machine]

The wonderful world of Nitrogen

Getting ammonia from natural gas is a synthetic process, basically cleaving that molecule out of the gas mix, a process called catalytic cracking, and then fractional distillation. Actually, Im not even certain they have to crack the mix, like they do with crude oil. They might only have to heat it, then distill it. Anyway, ammonia is amongst the lightest of the compounds and fractions off near the front of the molecular pack, so to speak.

'Fixing' is a biological process, a very cool trick where a plant's roots, in a symbiotic relationship with certain soil bacteria, can grab nitrogen out of the atmosphere and 'fix' it into a form that the plant can use. A few notable crop plants that do this are alfalfa, soybeans and peanuts. Once these are harvested, assuming the roots are left in the ground, or at least fragments of them, the soil benefits from all the new nitrogen now there, that wasn't there before those crops were planted. 'Crop rotation' is based on this sort of strategy.

Leguminous plants all have in common the ability to fix nitrogen with, or on, their roots. There are leguminous trees that tend to find housing on poor soils and do better than trees that don't fix nitrogen. Sometimes non-fixing crops are planted amongst nitrogen fixing plants, so the one can benefit directly from the work of the other's root. An example would be planting vanilla orchids under cashew trees.

Am I off the subject ? Our thread took a turn toward chicken poop, glanced off the petroleum industry, and then went underground. Ummmm, what was the subject again? -TM-

 

[Dan F]

Actually, you forgot about glow-in-the-dark fish too.

Leguminous trees are in the Fabaceae (formerly the Leguminaceae family, and I may have misspelled both family names!). The only ones I'm thinking of off the top of my head are locust trees, I know there's a LOT more (maybe catalpa, redbud?).

That's why when you submit a soil sample for testing they ask what crop had been planted the previous year. Reccomendations are based partially on that and what is to be planted the current year.


Dan

 

[ORclimber]

Red Alder(Alnus rubra) fixes nitrogen. It was long considered an undesirable forest tree of little economic value. Foresters would kill it when possible and keep the conifers. Ironically, its value as a saw log has recently exceeded Doug-fir and there are lawsuits against Weyerhauser alleging they cornered the alder market.

 

[Tree Machine]

The makin of dirt

Most definitely, TreeCo has the right method. If I had that sort of gear, I would be moving my rows around. That's how to get the best loamy, rich earthy humus. Oxygen. Fungus needs oxygen to grow and work it's way over the surface of all the individual chips.

If the fresh chip pile is more than 4-6 " deep, it goes anaerobic, and the fungus can't survive down there that deep. The chips will continue to decompose, though the fungus there is in a form called mold, which can thrive anaerobically. But it doesn't break down lignin and cellulose anywhere as fast as the aerobic fungi.

So if you're just dumping deep piles, never turning them, it'll just take more time to bioconvert. That's all. -TM-

 

[Tree Machine]

Better pic.

 

[Tree Machine]

Makin dirt

I really wish I had some way to mix my chips. I know it would allow them to convert to soil, better and faster.

Instead, I spread my chips out, keeping them less than 6 or 8" deep. The next load will get placed behind them, the next in front of them, etc., allowing at least a few days before the one pile gets buried over again. I drive up onto my piles with the truck, and over top of them. This compacts the chips, which is less desirable than 'fluffing' them by mechanical turning. It's just that I don't have a lot of choice in the matter.

This tactic does turn out some quality soil the following year, and allows me to put dozens and dozens of loads into a fairly tight, compact area. Sprinkling on the nitrogen from time to time, I know, helps in the end. And that I use canola oil instead of bar oil leads me to believe my chips, and thus soil, will be as close to 'organic' as I can make it. -TM-