Tag

Chop and Drop

Techniques for cutting support species — dynamic accumulators, nitrogen fixers, fast-growing shrubs — and leaving the cuttings in place as surface mulch. Covers timing cuts to maximise biomass, choosing species for continuous chop-and-drop cycles, and how repeated applications build organic matter and feed soil biology without removing material from the system.

3 articles

SECONDARY · DESIGN·5 min read

Syntropic farming: growing a food forest the way nature builds one

Syntropic farming, developed by Ernst Gotsch, farms with natural succession and stratification, using heavy pruning instead of fertilizer. Here is how it works.

SECONDARY · SOIL·5 min read

Pruning leucaena for biomass — Götsch’s chop-and-drop, applied

Leucaena is not a crop you harvest. It is a pump you operate. Leucaena leucocephala — ipil-ipil , river tamarind — exists in a syntropic system to convert sunlight and atmospheric nitrogen into bio…

SECONDARY · DESIGN·5 min read

The understorey question during the secondary stage

The secondary stage is where most syntropic plantings either compound or stall, and the understorey is the reason. By years two to five the pioneers have done their work, the climax trees are in bu…