I’m using A bit blunt method for a lot of the new beds I’ll be planting later this year.
One of my neighbors has a fill-dirt area on his property where people deposit rocks, shrubbery, and other “yard waste.” It just so happened someone deposited the refuse of a cement-brick wall to be pushed over the hill, which quickly disappeared to my place (with his permission, of course). I have four pallets stacked with these mostly very nice rocks. Pictured above is a little over one pallet’s worth. So there’s more coming.
I figure if they’re going to sit, they might as well be killing grass while doing it.
I also have a cherry tree that’s laid dead for two years now I’m just getting
around to cutting into ‘pucks’. The ones from last year I’ve mostly given permanent homes as steps.
Yes, the work involved in laying this mulch seems rather inefficient. I have about two hours into what is pictured. This was mostly getting wood cut and moved and the longer move of bringing the rocks into the food forest. Now that I have them at work, only small moves will take place, and there will be a lot of grass removed for which I didn’t have to use my limited resource of dried grass.
Like last year’s pucks, pretty much all these hunks of wood will be used as stepping stones until decaying into humus and feeding plants. The stones will become permanent stepping stones, with the added function of thermal mass.
That’s the end purpose. I’m looking at this mulch function as a beneficial function in-between.
I mention this reasoning because it seems not many people get it right away. I’ve had several people ask me what I’m doing with these rocks and wood pucks, and you can only imagine the looks on their faces when I reply, ‘mulch.’
Mortal Tree 
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