Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Chipping Away at Permaculture

As our next step in creating a permaculture landscape in Ally's yard, we asked our friend Don to come over with his chipper to help with breaking down a huge pile of brush. Instead of having all the brush hauled off to the landfill, we decided to keep it onsite and use the resource for mulch and compost building.  It's part of our permaculture ethic, to close the loop and reuse as much as possible.

Don purchased the chipper with this is mind.  Whenever we have a need to chip up a bunch of organic debris, he is the person we call.  He's been helping neighbor's and friends since he started in his own backyard last summer.  It's a great piece of equipment for small to mid-size jobs.  Easily portable and economical, and makes really nice mulch.

Earlier in the week, our crew had cut down a volunteer pine tree and trimmed vines and hedges all around Ally's yard.  The trunk and some of the branches were too big to chip, so we cut them into lengths to be used as firewood.   Most of the rest of the branches we cleaned for mulching. The rest we lopped up into big compost piles.  After about 6 hours of work we had about 5 yards of rough compost and a dozen bags of fine mulch to be used in the yard.

Thanks Don!  Now we can move on to the next phase of Ally's edible landscape--building raised beds and compost bins.

No comments:

Post a Comment