Sheet Mulch : Building Soil Nature's Way

I had the oppurtunity this weekend to take a significant amount of lawn, 1000+ sq ft, at a client's house and begin to turn it into a perrenial bed. Round-Up is not an option in my world, so I pitched Sheet Mulch and it sold. Here is a photo how to for a simple, effective 3 ingredient Sheet Mulch with materials that are locally and readily availible here on the rural fringe of Suburbia: wood chips, cardboard pallet sheets, and horse manure.

Step #1 Prep the Ground

This plot had not been mown in months, so it took several passes with my electric mulching mower to knock down the turf grasses with the great result being a 1/2" thick layer of mulched grass. The owner called them weeds, I called it a Green Manure crop!

Step #2 High Nitrogen "Starter"

In this instance there was a horse farm literally a block away from the home, but the edges of suburbia are speckled with horse farms. Some neighborly conversation can get you access to a trailer load of manure prebasted with straw/sawdust for near perfect carbon:nitrogen ratio. It sounds nasty, and it can smell alittle ripe, but use a long fork and you will be fine. I spread it about 2" thick, but feel free to go as much as 4". More than that and you might go anerobic. 2" deep for 1000 sq ft will took about 5-6 yards or 3 loads with my trailer. That's alot of forking, but you can't beat the net returns!

Step #3 Weed Barrier

I like to use pallet sheets. Most warehouses, and some retailers-especially those carry alot of pet food or other bagged product, will have these in abundance. Again, do some calling and make nice to see what you can turn up. Newspaper 4-7 sheets thick works great too, but pallet sheets are ink free, and don't blow around as much in the wind, plus each sheet covers 16 sq ft so you cover ground quick. I overlapped mine at least 6" on all sides so it took the better part of 100 pallet sheets. The manure is thick with oat and hay seeds, this layer will keep them and the turf grasses out of the bed.

Step #4 Weed Free Mulch

Every muncipality out here has a free mulch pile for its residents. This municipality even had a backhoe on hand to fill my trailer with 2-3 yards of chips in about 5 minutes! I made 5 trips in 2 hours. Check out that windrow!! And, yes, my shoulders will be unuseable tomorrow... The garden will get a 6-7" layer of this that will settle to 5-6". Spoiled hay, straw, etc would also work, but spoiled hay is alot harder to find if you aren't Ruth Stout, and straw typically costs money. Wood Chips take longer to break down, but they don't blow around much and are a perfect medium for innoculating with edible mushrooms!

Putting it Together

When sheet mulching I find it to be much easier to not let any one step get to far infront of the others. Get too much manure down and it starts to dry out, get too far ahead of the woodchipping with the pallet sheets and they start to blow away. Sheet mulching is a very satisfying to do, as the ground is covered very quickly and the sense of accomplishment is huge.

Tools of the Trade

I did this job solo in 10 hours start to finish, with the exception of having 60 of the pallet sheets on hand prior to starting. Here is a short list of some tools that saved me massive amounts of time, all of which are pictured above

1. Utility Trailer. Mine is 5x8', cost under $700 and turns my Forester into a "pickup truck" extraodinaire, able to move 3 yards of light mulch with ease, or 2 yards of manure. Plus a trailer's sides are 3' shorter than a pickups so schlepping manure into it is much, much easier. Besides, when I don't need a work horse I take the trailer off and the Forester goes back to getting 32 mpg vs a pickups 14! I love my trailer!!


2. Wheelbarrow. I purchased a mulch barrow for this job. $95 at TSC and it holds 10 cu feet. Even overflowing with manure I could lift it with ease-the balance is more Vermont Cart than traditional wheelbarrow with alot of the weight past the wheel's fulcrum helping you lift the wieght. I have named it Archimedes, but often call it Hubris... A barrow this big is bound to get me in trouble...
   
3. Coal Shovel and Compost Fork. The Coal Shovel can move over a cu ft of mulch/manure at a scoop-mulch is light so it pays to move as much per scoop as possible. I picked it up at Menards for $16 as quality/design seemed simple. The Compost Fork is from Earth Tools and imported from Germany. It has a balance and feel that far exceeds anything you will ever find in a hardware store, and is worth every one of its $40.


4. Helpers! Many hands make light work; I had my uber energetic 5 yr old with me. True, the amount of work done by Sprout was minimal, but the diversion of someone to talk to was priceless, and mad props to him for keeping us both entertained for a full day as "Mr. Stone" keeping the cardboard from blowing away, or squealing anew everytime I dumped him out of the wheelbarrow on the return trip to the mulch windrow. Regardless of their age, someone to keep the weed barrier from blowing away is always a good thing!
   

The end result of a single days hard work will be taking 1000 sq ft of very sandy loam and covering it with an 8" layer of organic matter. Through fall and into spring the soil's ecosystem will kick into high gear with the manure's nitrogen and eat away at the cardboard. The chips will also begin to decay-I see about a 25% decomposition annually in my paths at home. The net result by June should be a 2-3" layer of ecologically alive compost covered by 4" of wood chips-ready to plant!

Sheet mulching can be a great way to relatively easily turn lawn into garden-as long as you have several months before you want to plant. Those months are worth it if you can spare them: in addition to killing the sod, you keep the topsoil of your lawn, with all its ecology, intact, and add 2-4" of topsoil in the process.

-Beo

Stumble It!

Dead Zone

So last year I began experimenting with sheet mulching and had very high hopes. Now, 6 months later I am reporting back. Unfortunately it is with mixed results. The partial success is that the sod is, in fact, dead. The partial failure lies in the fact that the mulch material is not decomposed-or at best only partially. That was last week and I found it frustrating, but it got sidetracked as I began Orchard Prep in full force.

But tonight I spent the final hours before sundown after work preparing about 100 sq feet of soil that I had pulled the sod off this weekend. For some reason that fact that I hadn't seen a single worm finally sunk in. Let me say that again-in turning 100 sq ft of lawn-organic lawn-to a depth of about 8" I did not turn over a single worm. My conclusion, based solely on anecdotal evidence without soil tests, is that my soils are as dead as I had once feared. This is why the sheet mulch is just sitting there-one needs decomposers to decompose coffee grounds and cardboard. This lawn has been there for almost 3 years now, but our subdivison, like most, had its soil stripped off and sold, and then post construction had hundreds of yards of backfill trucked back in-in our case it was quarry waste: a stable and cheap mix of sand, clay, and stones. That backfill came from a subsoil or lower level in the soil strata-a strata dead to the soil ecosystem.

Into that layer-with a thin veneer of topsoil (2-3") crushed to oblivion by my spreading it with a skid steer- I am trying to create my Eden. I recently wrote about inoculating the soil with benifical fungus, but this goes deeper. I need to literally rebuild the entire soil ecosystem. Luckily I am not treading on virgin soil as it were-my trusty texts on Edible Forest Gardening speak of technique to do just that. The long and short of it is that I will be taking some 5 gallon buckets to nearby woods-as old growth as I can find-and scoop out some soil to mix into my orchard plantings. This is a broad base inoculation that will hopefully start to cover the gamut of bacteria, fungus, nematodes, and critters that I need to balance (or in this case create) my soil ecosystem. There is an abandoned farm about a mile from here with standing timber-I plan on making a foray next week to make some very significant progress on righting the wrongs of my site.

Be the Change!

Stumble It!

Sheet Mulch: Spring Edition

Not sure if you noticed yet, but we have a propensity to add perennial beds at a pace that is almost concerning. Last year that meant I spent alot of time, effort, and profanity cutting and hauling sod. The kicker with removing all that sod is not only the effort expended, but also the fact that it includes about 50% of my topsoil. That I paid for. True I am composting the sod, but it seemed wasteful-and in terms of time and energy it certainly was.

So if you have followed some of my earlier posts about this years plans, we intend to get into orcharding. Not huge, but 4-8 trees. Alot of this is in pursuit of my goal of growing 1 ton of food on our suburban lot in Zone 5, another goal is to finally plant some real permaculture guilds from the ground up. The picture at left is my first real foray down those paths.

The first picture is my laying out of about 15 cardboard slip sheets that I got from our local organic feed store (yes, we have an organic feed store-have I mentioned I love WI?). The slips protect bags of grain from damage and typically are recycled, but they are also the perfect size for sheet mulching. Any local business that deals in palletized freight should have plenty for you-just make sure they weren't shipping pallets of Diazinon...

I also collect about 20 gallons of organic waste from a local coffee shop each week. That raw material has been building up all winter in a compost bin-to the tune of almost 2 cu yards. I opened up that bin and trucked it to the front yard to spread it about 8" thick across the cardboard-I know it was damp because 2/3 of the pile was still frozen!

Once that was rough leveled with a rake, I top dressed it with a 3-4" layer of chips from our local village yard as seen in the final picture. By mid May when I want to get my trees and guilds in, the raw organic material will be 75% composted and teeming with microbial life with all its goodness. So instead of removing 50% of the topsoil I built it 6" deeper!

Here is the best part-doing this the traditional way would have taken at least a weekend of toil. Instead this took less than 2 hours-and that includes going to get the chips from the village lot. The benefits of letting Gaia do the work for you are legion: better soil, less effort, and more time to devote to other tasks. Plus the chance to lay out fetid masses of "garbage" in your front lawn and then take pictures of it while my neighbor's watched was priceless!

Want to sheet mulch yourself? It is crazy easy:

• Sprinkle a high nitrogen fertilizer over the area to be converted to garden to jump start the process. Raw manure is great, I used pelletized chicken manure due to lack of livestock. Seeds in this layer are fine. Sprinkle lightly with water if needed to get it moist.
• Lay out your weed barrier, ensuring at least 6" overlap at the seems so the sod doesn't try to creep through. I prefer cardboard as it doesn't blow away as easily and is readily availible, but 3+ layers of newspaper work well too. Even jeans or natural carpet would work! Keep this layer damp.
• Cover this with compost materials at least 4" thick, but 8" is better. Remember that this will be you soil material and it will break down to 50% of its original volume. Anything that would go into your pile is fine, but avoid noxious invasive weed material like Quack Grass rhizomes. Ensure entire layer is moist.
• Top dress with at least 4" of weed free mulch. Wood chips, marsh or spoiled hay, straw, etc are all fine. This is the layer that keeps the weeds seeds below from ever germinating and can be as aesthetic as you need.

That's it! You can sheet mulch around existing plants by cutting holes in the weed barrier, or pull the mulch back when you want to add plants. remember to give air space between the mulch and the stems to avoid vole and fungal damage.

Congrats! You have just created a haven for microbial life, built literally tons of life sustaining humus and you proved to the world that you don't need a rototiller to make a garden!

Be the Change!

Stumble It!

Mulching in the New Year

Though waning, the heat wave is still here. So yesterday while Bird slept, Sprout and I continued to make progress in the garden. With the passing of the holiday's we have a surplus of cardboard in the house and it just so happens that I have several beds to put in. Plus reading Ruth Stout's No Work Garden she scolds the reader continuously in case they have forgotten that Fall is the best time to mulch. Okay, Ruth...Sheet Mulch Time!

In a moment of pride I hesitated to post the picture, but then figured no garden looks good in January so why not? The bed at right is not new, but we are extending it out several feet to match the expected drip line of the apple tree at the center and make room for more nitrogen fixers and another Comfrey. The area under leaves was basically bare earth this year, planted to spring annual flowers, and then in July the strawberry patch in the background was allowed to send suckers in. The Strawberries will become the groundcover in the guild. The large plant that is difficult to see on the right is a giant native Bee Balm that was covered in pollinators and hover flies this past summer so it will fit into this Apple Tree Guild just fine. Behind that is one of my existing Comfrey plants.

Later today, I will go make another Compost Run to our coffee shop and gorp 15 gallons of coffee shop slop onto the cardboard, then top dress that with 8" of leaves from our municipal yard. I will probably need to cover it with fencing to keep the dogs out of it until it freezes, but I am hooked on sheet mulching. Total time spent is about what it would have taken to rip up the sod, but by March's thaw (I am assuming we will freeze first) we will be well on our way to a thick 5" layer of humus teaming with worms instead of having to truck in Compost. Sweet!

Stumble It!