Using wood for soil building and mulching - AGROFORESTRY ACADEMY - SOIL BUILDING

Hey everybody, welcome to the Agroforestry Academy channel. Today I want to talk to you about wood. This is the most amazing resource that our forests produce and not only is it an amazing building resource, it's one of the best materials we have, but it's our best fertilizer for the soil. There's no doubt about that because wood really feeds the soil and the soil's microorganisms and it creates, when it decays, it creates that black soil that we love so much and plants love it even more. So in this area where I stand right now, there was an old tree, an old species that's the scientific name is genipa americana and it's from the Rubiaceae family, really big tree, it's an emergent tree and it was really old and it shaded the whole area so it was too big for me to prune it, so it would be really really hard to prune it drastically as it needed to be pruned. So I just took it down but without a problem because I planted lots of its sons here in the system so they're gonna thrive and they're gonna substitute their mother soon enough. And taking down the tree provided me with lots and lots of wood and this is just an amazing thing, let me show it to you here. We used it around the beds, on the edges of the bed and we also used it on some of the pathways here as you can see here. So now I can walk on the wood, this is really good because it protects the soil in the place where it needs the most because we step on it so much it ends up compacting and the wood completely protects the soil from that so I really love putting wood on the pathways. One thing is important when you do this is that the wood needs to be really firm right, it can't be rolling over otherwise when you step on it you might fall and this is something really important when you're in a field you don't want to fall because there might be sticks and potentially dangerous pieces of wood around. So what we do is we we put thicker logs close to thinner logs as you can see here so you know we we put a thicker log than a thin log than a thicker log than a thin log and this makes them more firm so that they just don't roll around too much so you can step on it just without the fear of falling. Now the amazing thing is what happens beneath the wood and because the thing is that this protection lasts so long and it provides so much material for microorganisms to digest that it creates this environment full of life underneath it so I'm going to take this one out so that you can see it and in fact it's really amazing because when it's been lying here for so long when you try to take it out you actually feel like the earth is holding on to it it's like the earth is actually eating it you know the soil clings to it I'm gonna do it so check out this beauty I don't know if I've got a good the light's not so good I don't know if you can see it but look what goes on underneath here and this is really amazing because you know we've got plant roots that they come to the to beneath the wood to feed directly from the wood and then we've got oh look at the plant roots they actually oh now you can see properly you know the plant roots they actually cling to the wood check it out because it's so full of nutrients and microorganisms they are all here you can see this yellow colony of fungi then there's this white one so it's completely colonized obviously there are lots of termites in here and you can see that the soil starts getting really well structured because it's got all these insects that work on it so check it out you've got all these little crumbles which is the work done by insects so this is a very very precious resource so that's why we plant trees in order to prune them you know I plant trees because I want to have wood on my soil that's one of the reasons and I want to prune them and put wood on the soil constantly so we need fast growing trees in order to be able to do that quickly the faster we put wood in our soil the faster it will grow rich and the faster we're gonna have a healthy microorganisms population here in the soil so let's plant trees but let's remember to prune them constantly because it's really easy to get attached to trees you know they're very very beautiful and we love them so much but it's really important for the dynamics of the system that they be pruned and that we're constantly feeding the soil with fresh organic matter and we want to be wood we want that organic matter to be wood you know apart from leaves and branches obviously but wood is really what feeds the soil it's the definitely the most complete and preferred food for microorganisms in the soil you know be it the whole logs or shredded wood obviously shredded wood decomposes faster and that's a good and a bad thing if you put entire logs the good thing is that they last longer and they provide a lot they create a longer process of decomposition and that's a good thing because different process happen and different microorganisms are needed in order to break that thing down not only microorganisms but insects as well so it creates a richer environment and that's a very very good thing for your ecosystem but obviously there's something to be said about the logistics of using shredded wood you know it's just a lot easier to spread shredded wood around than it is to put logs on the soil so that's that's something we have to balance you know how fast we can work on a field versus the ideal way of working on a field so and obviously it depends on the tools you have i don't have a machine which shreds wood so i just have to do everything with a chainsaw so i end up doing logs but you know if you have a wood shredding machine you can just shred the whole tree and distribute it on your soil so that's it people that's what i have for you today thank you very much for watching here's a view of the field we've got the cassava resprouting from a recent pruning because we need to make these pineapples flower so we give it a bit more of sunlight and remember guys keep it pruned keep your soil covered