Hello Robin
I've been following G. lemieux work for a while now after an article
entitled Regenerating Soils with Ramial Chipped Wood appeared in the Maine
Organic Farmers Gardeners Association newspaper in December of 98. I
followed instructions in the article and spread and shallow tilled a couple
inches of hardwood chips on two of my new growing beds season before last. I
also at the time added paramagnetic stone, rock phosphate, aragonite
azomite. This year I grew the finest crop of potatoes I've ever seen on one
of these beds. The soil is loose with the white filaments of mycorhizal
associations and many earthworms. When I began it was a tough almost
impenetrable clay. My other area devoted to potatoes wasn't even close in
terms of productivity quality.
Lemieux and co-authors Celine Caron L. Lachance of the article mentioned
above discuss how the forest and prairie ecosystems work and distinguish
between long lived humus that can be produced with hardwood chips and the
short term humus farm manure or compost typically produce. The article can
be read at
http://www.gm-unccd.org/FIELD/Funds/Bilaterals/Canada/RegenSoil.htm
-Original Message-
From: Robin Duchesneau [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Friday, August 30, 2002 8:38 PM
Subject: Wood chips and tellurian biology
Hello,
I found a good reference concerning wood chip usage. It's called:
«Fundamentals of Forest Ecosystem Pedogenetics: An Approach to
Metastability
Through Tellurian Biology» and was written by G. Lemieux. What's more
interesting is that the work is came out of a university!!! As to show
that
not all science is perverted to reductionism and chemical materialism:-).
As far as I'm concern the underlying philosophy of this research would
certainly have its place in the biodynamic forestry paradigm (-something in
development...if you want to participate, please let me know, I'm in the
process of building a research program). I would say that it somewhat
corresponds to BD agricultural compost management, but for the forest.
Humus being the material link and holism the spiritual framework. In a
sense this give function back to 'useless' plant material; twigs play an
important role in forest ecosystem soil processes and, consequently,
above-ground dynamics.
Below I've transcribed some important findings of the research. Note that
the author uses the term RAMIAL CHIPPED WOOD (RCW). Ramial simply refers
to
small tree branches or, in other words, twigs. It's a tad long to read,
but, again, the effort has it's rewards. If you should desire the entire
paper please let me know. I'll direct you to the pdf. file.
The technique... is a combination of the sheet composting technique used
in the United States and brush composting used by the French. Branches (of
trees) less than 7 cm in diameter were hogged into chips no more than a few
centimeters long and then spread on the ground at a rate of 200m 3 /ha, or
2
cm thick, and incorporated into the top 10 cm of soil... The agricultural
results obtained from adding chipped twigs to topsoil, e.g. enhancement of
soil substructure and texture, positive changes in the C/N ratio and pH,
and
the modification of weed, insect and disease behaviour, proved that we were
looking at a very important phenomenon that had been ignored by the
scientific literature...
...With assistance from Dr. Marcel Goulet, we selected a one hectare site
known to have been sterile for the past 50 years but completely surrounded
by forest, thereby ensuring the availability of seeds (from trees) for
natural regeneration. Small plots from 2 to 4 m 2 in size were established
and a 1.5 to 2.0 cm thick layer of RCW (ramial chipped wood) spread as
litter or incorporated into the top few centimetres of soil, with a control
plot established above each row.
... During metabolization RCW generates tellurian characteristics that
foster new levels of plant succession, creating a new forest ecosystem. We
then confined our work to counting and identifying seedlings in plots,
distinguishing between trees, shrubs (conifers and hardwood), herbaceous
plants and non native plants...
This led us to draw our first conclusion: The biology and biochemistry of
RCW treated soil are not suited to fir (balsam fir) for reasons that
warrant
further study... Plots treated with hardwood RCW were more favorable than
those treated with softwood RCW, although they showed a certain instability
in individual and stand growth. As well, plots treated with dominant climax
hardwood RCW showed greater tolerance to hardwood germination and growth.
Conclusion: Larch (Larix laricina) stands are more suited to conifer
seedlings, whereas transition hardwood stands are more suitable to both
conifers and hardwoods, while nevertheless showing a certain degree of
instability.
...As with the first agricultural experiments using RCW has showed a clear
improvement in yield, modification of soil structure, decrease or
