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Hey, I live just a little while away from a pretty dense tropical rain forest. I was hiking by the river not to long ago and I came across this wood from a recently fallen tree. There is a good few chuncks of it by the river. The wood is kind of soft like it a little decomposed I was wondering if I could somehow use it in my garden. Being straight from the deep forest I would think it has a lot of good organic nutrients or some benefit to a garden.

Also, what else could I find in a forest that could organically benefit my garden? Since its not to far from my house it would be great if I could find useful things for growing.

Heres what the wood looks like:
[img]https://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/dd393/rsolis251/Photo54.jpg[/img]

Absolutely! That stuff is fantastic - it adds bulk to the soil and improves drainage hugely, as well as adding beneficial nutrients as it continues to decompose. It's also of immense benefit if you grow orchids or bromeliads - they love wood at that stage in its life, and it's always better to provide local plants like them with local substrates....

Other good things that you can find in the forest include the leaf litter you find under the trees - that's the best mulch available in the tropics, and also the best when mixed with a bit of garden soil for growing Taro/Eddo. Tomatoes seem to love it too. Ditto to the soil you find under that leaf litter (usually to about the depth of your elbow, but sometimes as deep as your shoulder) - it's made up of mosses and fully decomposed leaves, and is super-rich.

Depending on your forest, you may also come across clay licks - if you gather a bit of this clay and turn it into any soil you suspect of having been contaminated, it will do a great job of binding the really hazardous stuff.

It also makes an excellent drainage media in potting soil mixes.

It adds much carbon and fungal sources, but now we need to balance it...

Most of our food crops live on the border of Bacterialand and Fungia. They liek a bit of each. So as long as we balance that fungal forest soil with some bacterial inputs (manures, food scraps, grass clippings, etc.) we're good...

HG

The Helpful Gardener wrote:It adds much carbon and fungal sources, but now we need to balance it...

Most of our food crops live on the border of Bacterialand and Fungia. They liek a bit of each. So as long as we balance that fungal forest soil with some bacterial inputs (manures, food scraps, grass clippings, etc.) we're good...

HG

How about if I mix it with my compost, will that balance out? Or if I put just that wood in my compost will that be a good balance?

What carbons are you putting in your compost already?

If you are not doing like 3 parts brown to 1 part green already, it should be fine... not more than 5 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen or things can get slow...(or stall).

HG

oh yeah thats some good stuff. if it does not crumble easily in your hands you should find some older stuff. you want it to be well broken down. Yours looks like it may be good.