Chop and Drop - PEP BB gardening.sand.chopndrop

(I hope this only posts once,  I keep losing my internet uploading...)

It took me a few days to mulch two 12ft long rows with chop and drop.  

They are mulching a bit over 12" on each side, plus about a foot on each end, so I think that just squeaks me into the + 50ft at about 54 or so done!  

I have mulberries and blueberries that need some mulching. There is a spot nearby with some overgrown grass that was just waiting for a good use. I wanted to test out using my electric hedge clippers on these stalks.

The rake is about 5 feet tall. I paced it off at 17'x 15' = 255 sqft. [click to make bigger]

I left the grass with the chickens for a day to eat some of the best seeds.

I mulched around three mulberries and two blueberries. The plank is an even 3' long.








A conservative 4x4 for each mulberry is 16sqft each. 2x6 for the blueberry is 12.
16+16+16+12=60sqft

Hi! This may be my first BB.
Here are the pictures, I guess I did a bit more than the 50ft², but I figured it was better to use more time chopping and dropping and less time measuring.
There were some leaves that I raked with the cut grass, so the mulch is a mix of brown leaves and recently cut grass.

My mint was set on taking over the world and the dock was quite fine with the idea too so I chopped three garden beds of weeds and unwelcome herbs. Two of the garden beds were 24' long and 4' wide and the third was longer, not sure how much though.

I don't know how much I chopped, but it feels like a lot!  I dropped it around three blackberry plants, a maple tree, and a wormwood bush.  I suppose the only one with questionable permaculture value is the wormwood.  It is medicinal (treats the worms),  and is a pretty good late summer pollinator stop.

I also dropped some chop on my dog poop compost row.  All the dog poop is raked to the side and then I mulch it deep.  It is working, so far.  An idea born out of laziness and love of compost.  While it is not a plant that gets mulched specifically through chop and drop it is a poop feasting ecosystem that benefits greatly from the green mulching.

Hello! I chopped and dropped two super-overgrown patches, each about 9x3 feet, making 27 + 27 sq. feet total =54 sq. ft. The desirable plants are gooseberries and honeyberries. (oops! Here are the pictures!)

Worked the afternoon today at Allerton Abbey doing chop and drop.  Reached 101 F at basecamp, so it was a very hot job. I was mostly chopping Common Tansy and Common Thistle and dropping them on the Hügelkultur mounts, probably 4-6 ft high along a 50 ft section of one mount and 32 ft of another, so 82 ft by 5 ft is 410 sq ft of drop area.  The chop area would be larger than that.

So here is my first attempt at a BB.

I've chopped and dropped two out of 4 rows of Bucking 14 comfrey that surrounds my vegetable garden. It's main purpose is to stop couch grass from creeping in (it used to be a big problem requiring constant attention but is now solved thanks to the comfrey) but of course it also provides us with lots of flowers for pollinators and of course huge amounts of nutrient richt biomass.

The first row is 29 meters long, the other is 12 meters. I've used the chopped comfrey to mulch 3 vegetable beds, 4 gooseberry's plants and 7 blue honeysuckle plants. The plants where relocated from another part of the garden last fall and are still recovering so could do with some extra help. Afterwards I has still a wheelbarrow of mulch left that went on to the compost pile. I did not measure all the mulched area's since it is visibly big enough.

I could write a book about the pictures I am posting here, but this is just about the chop and drop badge bit, so I have to keep it brief :D

I mulched a rather thin layer because fall is at our doorstep: everything will start to grow after the brutal summer heat, and I want to see growth rather than push back. I'm mainly trying to reduce evaporation and wind erosion at the moment (silt soil is quite a challenge to deal with, solutions to water erosion is not part of the chop and drop)

What you see is

picture 1: a pile of mulch next to a storebought Quercus suber (cork oak) that was planted is the middle of a terrace. This tree (just like any other one that comes out of a pot) needs mulch in order to survive.

picture 2 + 3: the mulched tree, after I even got more mulch because the pile in picture 1 was not sufficient. I put my shoe on the mulched area, to help put it all into scale. The shoe measures 30cm (0,98 foot, so close!), so if I've done the calculations correctly, the mulched area covers a little over 50 square feet.

picture 4: this a before and after of a spot from where I got part of the mulch: I'm clearing the olive trees to be able to harvest the olives in winter.

I cut down some grass and used it to mulch my hugelkultur in a spot too steep for woodchips to stick  The bare area was bigger than 7ft x 8ft.