Fall is one of my favorite times to build soil. My low-CEC soil doesn’t hold nutrients particularly well, so I’m attacking the problem from both the short and long term. I pair fresh arborist wood chips from ChipDrop with humates and dried molasses. The humates provide stable carbon with lots of exchange sites now, while the molasses gives soil microbes an easily available carbon/energy source. The wood chips are the long game—slowly decomposing into organic matter and helping build a more stable, biologically active soil with greater nutrient and water-holding capacity. Molasses feeds today. Humates help bridge the gap. Wood chips build tomorrow. Fall leaves, wood chips, roots—carbon is the foundation.

Comfrey is one of the most recommended chop-and-drop plants in food forests, but pokeweed deserves more credit than it gets. They aren’t really competitors—they’re good at different jobs. Comfrey wins as a dedicated biomass plant: predictable, intentionally placed, and excellent for repeated cutting. Pokeweed wins as a pioneer: it volunteers on disturbed ground, grows extremely fast, creates substantial shade and biomass, and costs nothing to establish. Manage the berries if you don’t want it spreading. Neither is a magical “mineral miner,” but both have substantial root systems that can cycle nutrients from deeper soil into above-ground biomass. 🌿 Comfrey = reliable long-term biomass 🌱 Pokeweed = fast, free pioneer biomass Comfrey is one I can pay for and pokeweed is free from nature. Maybe the real hot take is that we don’t always need to plant a soil-building plant when nature is already growing one.

Pokeweed is one of those plants that gets very different reactions. Some people see it and immediately reach for the shovel. Others see a native pioneer doing exactly what pioneers do. So which is it? Pokeweed can grow incredibly fast, create shade, produce a surprising amount of biomass, feed wildlife, and occupy disturbed ground that might otherwise remain bare. Cut it before the berries mature and that entire plant can become chop-and-drop mulch, returning organic material to the same soil that produced it. But pokeweed also has another side. It’s toxic if improperly consumed, birds readily spread the seeds, its large root system makes established plants difficult to remove, and one plant can quickly become many. That’s why I don’t think the answer is simply “good plant” or “bad plant.” In an unmanaged space, pokeweed can become a problem. In a managed food forest, an existing pokeweed plant can become a free biomass producer and temporary pioneer. Let it grow where it’s useful, harvest the biomass, prevent unwanted seed production, and eventually replace it as succession moves forward. Sometimes the difference between a weed and a resource is simply whether we’re managing it with a purpose. Pokeweed: friend, foe, or both?

I'm having to learn quite quickly the difference between temperate rain forest and dry land management, normally cutting back just before rain promotes lots of fresh growth, with dry vegetation and no moisture in the ground there's no regrowth and that being a disadvantage, is also, an advantage, a slower pace and time to cut overgrown margins. Dry biomass reacts differently as mulch, having a bigger percentage of carbon, breaks down slowly and being stiffer has more air gaps and therefore, a big volume. Early morning and evening is taken up with watering and the middle of the day is hammock time. This Mediterranean lifestyle doesn't suit me, and hopefully next year will return to normal, some metrologists are saying that the high sea temperature is going to stop or slow the gulf stream ,that is a major factor why Brittany weather is mild and wet, so a seriously cold winter could be the next thing to be adapted to.

It would be interesting to know how many hours members spend in their garden each week, either working or just relaxing. There's something about being outside makes us happy .