SD51555
5 year old buck +
I've had some white spruce die in my yard at camp, and they've been replanted once, and sometimes twice and still died. I have diagnosed the problem as stupidly high clay content, and a lack of oxygen. This past weekend, I replaced all those dead trees with potted black hills spruce. I've had luck in the past growing black hills in almost pure clay.
I decided to really intervene and try to change this soil. I keep a strategic reserve of aspen sawdust at my place. I had a neighbor that milled a houses building materials out of aspen logs. I got all of his sawdust from his saw mill and planer. I've got yards of it.
It's been rotting for 2-3 years now, and it's pretty well gone from bright colored dust to very dark brown or black matter. I dug out the root zone of those dead trees to about 3x the opening the potted tree would require. I took out about 2/3 of the dirt and set it aside. I left 1/3 in the hole, and mixed in that rotted sawdust and a very generous amount of gypsum, like 1-2 pints per hole (like a 3 gallon hole).
I stirred that gypsum and sawdust into the remaining clay very well and then dug it out to set aside while I put the root ball in. I then backfilled the hole with the made mix. I took the remaining un-amended dirt and scattered it thinly over the top of the soil, to maybe an inch thick. I then put more gypsum on top that un-amended clay. I then put even more rotted saw dust on top of that, and then I put the weed mat back on, and the rest of the old wood chips.
I'd be lying if i said I wasn't worried about too much calcium and too much sulfur. But I'm tired of losing to this airless tooth paste clay. I had one hole near the ditch that had zero topsoil. It was already a dead zone for oyxgen and topsoil, so I went at it hard with air, carbon, calcium, and sulfate sulfur. I also got an inch of rain on Monday, so I'm anxious to see how this pans out. If they're gonna die because I went to hot with the dose, I hope I see it sooner rather than later.
I decided to really intervene and try to change this soil. I keep a strategic reserve of aspen sawdust at my place. I had a neighbor that milled a houses building materials out of aspen logs. I got all of his sawdust from his saw mill and planer. I've got yards of it.
It's been rotting for 2-3 years now, and it's pretty well gone from bright colored dust to very dark brown or black matter. I dug out the root zone of those dead trees to about 3x the opening the potted tree would require. I took out about 2/3 of the dirt and set it aside. I left 1/3 in the hole, and mixed in that rotted sawdust and a very generous amount of gypsum, like 1-2 pints per hole (like a 3 gallon hole).
I stirred that gypsum and sawdust into the remaining clay very well and then dug it out to set aside while I put the root ball in. I then backfilled the hole with the made mix. I took the remaining un-amended dirt and scattered it thinly over the top of the soil, to maybe an inch thick. I then put more gypsum on top that un-amended clay. I then put even more rotted saw dust on top of that, and then I put the weed mat back on, and the rest of the old wood chips.
I'd be lying if i said I wasn't worried about too much calcium and too much sulfur. But I'm tired of losing to this airless tooth paste clay. I had one hole near the ditch that had zero topsoil. It was already a dead zone for oyxgen and topsoil, so I went at it hard with air, carbon, calcium, and sulfate sulfur. I also got an inch of rain on Monday, so I'm anxious to see how this pans out. If they're gonna die because I went to hot with the dose, I hope I see it sooner rather than later.
