I read a while back that Tom Wegener threw the shaving/sawdust from his paulownia boards into the garden. Well, because I have been shaping in the back yard, I have been dumping the wood shavings in a garden my wife has. Today she complained that all the plants were burnt. It was a bit hard to mount much of an argument as the leaves of a variety of different plants were turning either brown or yellow. This appeared to be only happening in the areas where I had placed the wood shavings.
Anyone have a similar experience with paulownia or know why this might be occurring?
Hey Bob - I noticed very similar results when using a lot of balsa sawdust & shavings in my garden. Checking the Ph and sweetening it w/ lime or dolomite is a good call as Huie and Doc say, but also I think WWMark is right on the money by pointing out the nitrogen deficiency caused by decay of the wood byproducts…Sign of nitrogen deficiency = yellowing of stalks and leaves (older ones). Add some nitrogen along with the wood shavings, plants need a lot of it anyway. Soybean meal is good for organic gardening (lots of N) or if you’re not that picky just a 5-10-5 fertilizer, which is good for veggies (“things I can eat” = why I garden!)
PS note that the “smell” WWMark talked about would only be there if you left your shavings in a pile for a while and they started breaking down without enough air - cause you didn’t churn them (good composting pratice).
I'd guess that the pawlonia shavings are breaking down quick ( it being such a light wood and all) , making the soil kinda acid, so the dolomite ( as mentioned) or garden lime is the way to go. If you go at the soil with a pH meter or test kit ( available at most good garden stores, around $15 US) you'll know for sure. The lime is a quick fix, but the dolomite is more a timed-release kinda thing. Wood ash can do the same thing, but not as reliably.
If you have some Azaleas, Rhododendrons or Blueberries, they like it acid: scatter your shavings around them and they'll thrive. The Rhodies are actually a kind of pH meter, the color changes in more or less acid soil. I have lots of oak shavings from the boat work and I put them around my blueberry bushes. And they seem to be quite happy about it all. The rest of the wood chips and such, I compost those, then add wood ash, trying for a more neutral pH. .
Thanks. After Huie’s post I did a few searches and saw limes aren’t all the same, so the pH test is a good idea. Lillies went yellow and the darker leave plants went brown. Our soil is a great mix of clay and shale. Herbs and things I can eat are the extent of my gardening interest.
Thinking about it, if pawlonia is anything like balsa, it's one of those trees that comes in in a recently cleared or burnt forest, so it probably thrives in acid situations. And makes an acid mulch itself. I'd whack it with powdered lime, test and then go from there. And build a composter with a little rabbit wire and some stakes for future projects.
I'm with you on what I want to grow, and add fruit trees to that too. But, as H. Rider Haggard said and the late John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey quoted, She Who Must Be Obeyed has priority.
Shale and clay - ouch. Tough soil, that. I'd add all the leaf mulch/compost ( and lime) that I had the energy for ( nice wide-tined spading fork, good for the paddling muscles) and go from there. I like the pH meters, as I tend to wonder if I did the litmus tests right, where the pH meter gives you an answer you have a lot more peace of mind with.
Helluva note, talk about how this digresses, here we are going on about gardening on a surf forum.
Non-composted, “fresh” or non-aged mulches may cause nitrogen deficiencies in many young trees, shrubs and flowers. Decomposing bacteria and fungi that ultimately break down mulch must have an ample supply of nitrogen to do their job. Most landscaping mulches are comprised of bark or wood that has very little nitrogen available for the decomposing bacteria. Hence, the bacteria in the soil utilize the existing nitrogen to break down the mulch. This process may cause nitrogen deficiencies and yellow leaves as a result of the excessive mulch.
Organic material that has been stockpiled in a large pile often goes through anaerobic (low oxygen, high moisture) decomposition and becomes very acidic — pH of about 3.0. (Properly composed organic material will have a pH between 6.0 and 7.2.) Anaerobic decomposition is often a problem with leaves or large piles of wood chips. Such materials are toxic to plants due to the byproducts of anaerobic decomposition: methane, alcohol. The mulch will have a smell of vinegar, ammonia, or sulfur. Marginal leaf chlorosis, leaf scorch, defoliation, and/or plant death may occur. Damage usually occurs within 24 hours after application.
Thanks again. It probably would have seemed less of a digression if I had used the subject line: “disposing of wooden surfboard construction waste” but it didn’t have the same ring to it. I find hand planes frustrating to adjust etc, but out came the smoothing plane today and now I have a mound of shavings - my wife while not ecstatic, was pretty cool about it all.
Mark,
Thanks as well. Sounds like testing the pH is the go. At this stage there is no strong smell from the shavings.
raw in a salad, or boiled and served with a good vinegar – treat it like spinach, you’ll surf like PopEye!
This may seem like an off-topic thread, but everybody seems to want a “green” surfboard, how much greener than using wood and growing food with the waste?
PS some of my balsa leftovers = just cleaning up YOUR mess, Lee!
Thanks. Interesting that you had a similar observation. We don’t put much in the way of fertiliser around the yard so there may well be all sorts of deficiencies. One variable at a time - first gp surfing for two weeks, then the pH testing, then nitogen and/or lime/dolomite.
For what it's worth, you might well have the equivalent of our County Extension Service, people whose job is helping out the local small farmers with this and that, including testing soil samples for stuff that goes beyond simple pH testing. Might be useful to check the local listings for the Ministry of Agriculture or similar?
Thanks again. Never heard of any organisation like ths. My daughter’s boss is into organic gardening and she has been trying to interest me in a workshop. I may go to if the surf isn’t good ( we have had very little decent surf of late so any good day is worth catching).
For the time being I have piled all the shavings onto unwanted plants/weeds to see what happens. I’ll try to post a pic of the catalyst for all the shavings which I hope to road test in 4 days.
Uhmm- here these things are done on a town or county level, but you might want to give your local council a ring, see what they can direct you towards?
And for what it's worth, if you get hold of ( or build) a composter and feed it plant material and a little dolomite now and again ( Dolomite being more of a slow-release product than powdered garden lime) and stir it regularly with a spading fork, you should be in good shape.
I'll have to maybe shoot a coupla pictures of what I use...
This is what didn’t end up as shavings and mulch - there is a longish story to the construction, the short version is that next time I wouldn’t try to repair a wood board by expoxying another piece of wood onto the deck.
Very nice. Now I see why getting some water time ( with it) is ahead of some other things for you.
And I understand just what you mean about adding wood plus epoxy. A brief digression:
See, I'm really a boat carpenter...who happens to surf. Trained as one, been doing it off and on all my working life. And I'm old-fashioned about methods. It's maybe all well and good to try to be bleeding-edge with yachts and all, but for a wooden commercial fishing boat ( my specialty ) where it's not just somebody's life on the line but also their living, I'm a whole lot more comfortable with using old-school methods and materials that have been used ( and have worked) for a century or more.
But there's another guy around here, who was in the same business. But he ( a trust fund baby who spends a lot of time drinking lattecinomochablowmes in yupster coffee bars and thinks he can sing like Bob Dylan) doesn't do it the way I do. Instead ( imagine a really, really annoying Bob Dylan whine here) is known for saying 'Duuuude, epoxy and saaawduuuust, it's better than wooooooodddddddd'.
And the last time he did work on a commercial fishing boat here, that's what he went with. Considering that the boat he did before that went down and drowned the owner, I was surprised that he got that job, but in any event the owner of this last boat sued him, for incompetence. And won.
Which put a big dent in latte-boy's trust fund, I hope. When I heard how the case came out, well, a small cheer went up from the sidelines.
Epoxy is nice enough stuff, I suppose, but it's not the universal panacea that some would have you believe.
I’m hoping it is the Phoenix rather than the Hesperus. I’m taking a few different craft so if it fails I’ll have plenty of other boards etc to try. This one may end up in the garden.
