Image : Shakespeare the Bush Regenerator (he actually looks like one!)*
It may be a surprise to your good selves, but it is little know chapter of English history that before the immortal bard Shakespeare took up the pen to write his now famous plays, he was actually a Bush Regenerator working on restoring the once extensive woodlands of middle England. When not out practicing sound ecological weed management to enable the recruitment of the native woodland, he was busy planting trees in the Commons that had been deserted by the Black Plague. Not surprisingly he was a firm advocate of applying deep mulch to improve soil and increase tree growth and long before his play writing days he was known for his insight and passion for the use of organic matter in ecological restoration and famous for such phrases as “to mulch or not to mulch – that is the question” or “some mulch, some mulch my kingdom for some mulch”… It’s also little known fact that Shakespeare actually drew his name from his profession (as many did in the Middle Ages), it relates to his innovative technique of removing the highly invasive Eurasian Pear through a technique of shaking the saplings loose, hence Shakes – pear!
Now before you ask, the above is fiction (you’d be surprised) although it could contain some grains of truth… What cannot be argued however is the importance of the use of organic matter in revegetation. Most soils we decide to plant on are in some way degraded and by adding deep mulch around your newly planted tree, or even better still mulching months in advance of your planting will increase the health and vigour of your plantings and reduce weed problems in the early phases of revegetation. If you had the time, energy and available finances you could do far worse than surrounding each tree you plant with a whole bale of mulch! But if we settle for a quarter to a fifth of a bale per plant you’ll be doing well. As a general rule mulch depth should be ideally between 100-200mm and don’t pile mulch against the trunk of the tree.
What we often fail to take into account when planting native vegetation is the soil. We must recognise that trees, are just a part of a very complex forest ecosystem that relies on nutrient cycling between vegetation, fungi, fauna and soils and that increasing organic matter in the early stages will accelerate the organic feedback loop of mulch, tree, growth, leaf fall, mulch…. – that will turn the tubestock you plant today into the towering tree of tomorrow – figuratively speaking, maybe give it a decade or century or so!
* thankyou Wikipedia images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare.jpg
