Autumns just about here and we’re gearing up for the start of the soil amendments and de-compaction season. That means cleaning and re-disinfecting kit as well as stocking up on bio-char and soil.
Vertical mulching using bio-char, can benefit your trees in so many ways and alongside hollow coring, has the added benefit of helping your lawn and any other plants as well. While bio-char doesn’t actually add any nutrients into the ground it does attract and hold them in, improving soil fertility for longer and helping to prevent leaching into watercourses.
How do we do it?
While we could blow it in the soil using the airspade or a geo-injector, we’ve had some of our best results using the good old soil auger. It’s not fancy, it’s just a petrol drill in truth, but it does what it says on the tin, and augers vertical holes, with minimal disruption, so we can back fill with Soil, bio-char and worms.
Worms!!
Yep worms. Natures recycling chaps and natural aerators. As they burrow through the soil they naturally disturb it creating small fissures and helping with air, water and nutrient movement, as well as pulling leaves and other organic material in, eating and passing it out the other side. Worm poo, or worm casts to be politically correct, is full of nutrients and good stuff, it’s so good that you can buy it to work into your soil but I’d rather boost the population and let them produce as much as they can .
Anything else then?
Why yes there is. We add in some natural liquid amendments to help the beneficial soil microbes and fungi and pre-charge the bio-char, if the areas grassed we add a bit of grass seed to the topsoil on the holes we’ve drilled, or in some cases we mulch the rooting area with a pure wood chip, usually from willow trees or fruit trees and then that’s it. Soils amended, healthier than when we started and full of good stuff to help your trees and plants grow healthy.