You can help your garden — and the planet — by leaving the decaying logs and stumps where they are.
Advertisement Simply leaving a piece of dead wood in your garden and letting it decompose into the soil can help your plants thrive. Placing it in a moist, shady spot to encourage fungi to grow on it and surrounding it with soil and plants will speed the decay process.
You can also make use of the wood while you wait for it to decay. The stump of a dead tree, left intact, can be hollowed out for a planter or used as the base for a bird bath. Other options include surrounding your garden with a split-log border or creating a path with round slices of a log or trunk. As the wood breaks down, it adds carbon-rich organic matter to the soil., the technique involves mixing woody material with the soil of a raised bed. As the wood decays, it attracts beneficial soil bugs that help break down the organic matter, providing nutrients for the plants. To get nutrients into the soil even faster, consider connecting with someone who owns woodland and ask if you can have some dead wood that’s already rotting, suggests garden designer Jerry Fritz, of Jerry Fritz Garden Design in Ottsville, Pa. “Bring a small wheelbarrow and look for decaying logs,” he says. “The deader, the better. A fresh log will take years to break down.”Many organisms, including millipedes, springtails, beetles, spiders and worms, can make their homes in dead wood. They work their way into the wood, which also speeds up decomposition.Standing dead trees, or snags, can double as nurseries for more than 80 types of cavity-nesting birds in North America, including 10 species of owls, two species of falcons, all 21 species of woodpeckers and about 40 types of songbirds, according to theShare this articleSandler has left snags ranging from 10 to 100 feet high, sometimes pruning the top to resemble a natural tear. He installs owl and bat boxes in them, or cuts shelters into the snags. In one case, a year after he carved a cavity in a silver maple snag, he says, black-capped chickadees had made it their home.The beetles, spiders, ants and caterpillars that live in and eat dead wood become important food sources for birds, including brown creepers, white- and red-breasted nuthatches, and woodpeckers.Or you can use dead wood as a base for propagating mushrooms, creating a source of food for yourself. The process involves inoculating logs with mushroom mycelium purchased through a reputable dealer, then allowing the log to naturally colonize over several months. Use caution, though, particularly with wild mushrooms; many varieties are toxic. Besides, leaving mushrooms on dead wood allows them to work their magic decomposing the wood or serve as a food source for deer, squirrels and insects. Sandler says he once advised a client against removing an old elm snag because there was a burst of elm oyster mushrooms growing on it. He suggested that they trim it down instead. “That snag is still standing and producing mushrooms,” he says.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Morocco earthquake: Utah sending Air Force plane, disaster response teamAn earthquake struck Morocco while a military delegation from the country was in Utah to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a partnership with the state’s National Guard. On Saturday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told them, “We are here for you and we are ready to assist you in any way that we possibly can.'
Read more »
Small plane crash at air show in Hungary kills 2 and injures 3 on the groundPolice say a small propeller-driven plane has crashed during an airshow in central Hungary killing two people and seriously injuring three people on the ground
Read more »
Small plane crash at air show in Hungary kills 2 and injures 3 on the groundPolice say a small propeller-driven plane has crashed during an airshow in central Hungary killing two people and seriously injuring three people on the ground.
Read more »
Passengers evacuated on runway at Singapore's Changi Airport after Air China plane engine catches fireAn Air China flight was evacuated upon landing in Singapore after one of the aircraft engines caught fire on Sunday, leading to a three-hour closure of Changi Airport.
Read more »
Delta passengers stranded on island after diversion told to be ‘grateful’ plane didn’t crashPassengers on board a Delta flight that was diverted to a Portuguese island say they were stuck in a secluded part of the airport for 12 hours and had to beg for food, as representatives of the air…
Read more »
This liquid hydrogen-powered plane successfully completed its first test flightsH2FLY's HY4 prototype plane could hypothetically fly as far as 930 miles using the emissionless fuel source.
Read more »