I first came across the term ‘Chop and Drop’ in Geoff Lawton’s Establishing a Food Forest DVD. I reviewed the DVD here. Chop and Drop describes the actions of cutting branch wood from fast growing trees ‘nurse’ trees, and then using that wood to feed soil fungi, in order to help the production trees, planted amongst them. Chop and Drop is linked to the use of a more dense tree planting, often fast growing and nitrogen fixing, with many of these trees not destined to remain until maturity. Continue reading
Tag Archives: food forest
Willow Trial Update
Earliest Flowering Willow Trial
Last year I published a post about My Earliest Flowering Willow, and was surprised to see that the willow that flowered earliest for my was a hybrid called ‘Lapin’. I was up in the Forest Garden again today, ‘weeping’ at the damage done to my willows by rabbits, and noticed that again, the earliest flowering willow variety was ‘Lapin’. This was one of the three varieties that I had obtained from the National Willow Collection, at Rothamsted Research.
Chicken Scavenging System or Chicken Forage?
Not everybody likes the term ‘Chicken Scavenging System’. World renowned Permaculture author, Patrick Whitefield would prefer me to use something that sounds less desperate. Most permaculturalists use the term Chicken Forage, so what’s the difference, and what are the implications of using one system or another?
Bamboo Books for Permaculture
Hardy Bamboo and Chickens part 2
In my previous post about Hardy Bamboo, I looked at some of the plants that might be used in conjunction with chickens. Most will provide shelter, and an ideal environment for a Chicken Scavenging System. However that’s not all of the functions that bamboo can fulfill, and in this post I want to explore some of these other functions. After all one of the principles of Permaculture is that every element should provide more than one function. A permaculture principle that is very close to my heart, and which underpins the way that I design.
The functions that bamboo provide naturally are shelter from weather and predators I mentioned these in the previous post. You can read the earlier Chicken and Bamboo if you haven’t already done so.