The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Stump dirt and mushroom compost

Beech treeI consider stump dirt to be a miracle planting aid.  But what is it?

Stump dirt spilling out of a hollow tree

The obvious answer is --- that moist, dark, earthy-smelling organic matter found inside decaying trees or logs.  Different trees create stump dirt of varying quality; my favorite source by far is our ancient hollow beech halfway up the hillside, while box-elders product lower grade stump dirt.  Maybe hardwood stump dirt is better than softwood?

The analytical side of me started nibbling away at what stump dirt actually is a few weeks ago, and the best idea I've come up with is that stump dirt is pure organic matter created when fungi decompose wood.  The closest mainstream garden ingredient I could find is mushroom compost, but that is the result of fungi growing on higher nitrogen substrates like straw and manure, so any comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt.  One study of mainstream mushroom compost showed that it consisted of:

Handful of stump dirtNaysayers on the internet report much lower NPK values for mushroom compost, though --- closer to 0.7-0.3-0.3 --- and I suspect our stump dirt is at the lower end of the fertilizing spectrum.  That would explain why the garden beds I treated with stump dirt last year didn't show much growth --- stump dirt isn't a replacement for compost.  Instead, it makes a great ready-made potting soil and can also be used like peat moss to fluff up organic-matter-poor soil.  If we ever had enough to apply stump dirt to our garden in large quantities, I suspect it would act a bit like biochar, providing spots for microorganisms to grow unhindered.  And stump dirt from deep-rooted forest trees is probably even higher in micronutrients than the analysis above portrays.

All of that said, you can't buy stump dirt, and you only find it in middle-aged to old forests.  I mine a couple of five gallon buckets every year out of our beech tree, but save it for extra-special occasions.  Another reason to have a mature woodlot on your property, perhaps?

Never see another chick drown when you switch to our chicken waterer.


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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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