Edible Gardening

Swale your mulch! (let me explain)



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32 Comments

  1. I always thought the heat alone would break down the carbon, but trapping water makes sense. Sure wish you were our neighbor!!!

  2. Awesome video!! Great demonstration of swaling on a small scale and educating us encouraging imagination as to the benefits of swaling on the larger scale. Another very cool video. 👍

  3. Thank you for so much great content and hard work. Your contribution to people who want to do better for this world is immeasurable. You guys are doing great great work ❤️

  4. aw man i done goofed, wish i had this idea in the spring when i got my pile. i couldn't get it to breakdown at all so i just used it for walkways instead. thanks for the info this will help me get some mulch going next year <3

  5. Hey, what a SWALE idea!! I honestly feel kinda dumb and incredibly lazy for not having this thought enter my skull organically (i.e. without being prompted). But have i stopped Tubing and headed outside yet?!?

    ….maybe.

  6. any suggestions for airaid such as s tx we usually get 30 for yr we had 16 so far.i do gather lots of leaves and use they out the yr to cover the ground.

  7. When I get large wood chip loads on my front lawn I wheel mounds of wood chips and the chickens who live in the orchard/ full backyard kick and spread and even make their own small piles of wood chips that absorb the great amounts of rain we get in humboldt county California. The chickens turn large piles of wood chips into soil so quickly I can barley keeps the mounds supplied!
    The chickens mulch my fruit trees FOR ME
    I just do the work of supplying enough carbon in the areas I’d like them to spread it. Don’t even have to add feed to the piles!

  8. Interesting. Great tip. I had 4 loads dropped off near a soon to be garden extension. They're hilled up, so I'll move it around so water will seep in.

  9. Bringing volcanoes to mind. If we terraced the caldera and outer slopes it would have ridiculous passive fertility systems in place, both water and mineral fertility through the volcanic ash. I imagine that has already been done all over the world, time to research, be well

  10. A swale is a ditch, what you have is a berm. Two berms in series would have a sort of a swale in between but it would be like ground level or more so again still not really a swale. Lawton digs swales and piles the excess dirt onto logs making berms to mimic the Austrian fellow that taught us all about this.

  11. Again, food for thought 👍
    I have 2 HUGE piles of Woodchips that were dropped off from a tree company….. in upper Northern Nevada desert we don’t get that much rain… it goes around us 😢 so we’ll be doing this!
    Great lesson shared. 👵🏻👩‍🌾❣️

  12. Oh man that tip is super clutch! Thankyou so much! I was getting so mad that my wood chip pile wasn't breaking down fast enough….now I know why….man you're a gem 🙂

  13. Great… but worth mentioning that with a little more work you can make a table top mountain with a raised lip. This is my preferred method especially if coming in green but dry in summer. A single watering can even turn a cold pile hot if you can access the water 💦

  14. Very helpful! I recently made friends with a tree-trimming crew – a fact for which I am EXTREMELY grateful – and I've been thinking I'd probably have to do something like you've described.

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