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I'm doing my best to create as much of my own soil as I can so I don't have to keep buying bags at Walmart or pay a small fortune to have a truckload brought in. We don't create enough kitchen waste for any substantial amount of compost. The one organic matter that is plentiful on our half acre is uluhe. I'm wondering how good this would work for creating compost. I have cut down tons of it to clear out some space (don't worry I left the ohia alone) and have found that after it dies there is much more woody twig than leafy fern matter. It seems to do a fine job as a mulch from the weed prevention standpoint but I don't know how well it would break down. Perhaps putting it through a chipper or shredder would help? Besides that, does anybody know if it would be good, bad, or "meh" as organic matter for compost?
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I did a research paper on Uluhe for school a few years ago. It has a stem decomposition rate that is 1/4 of most of the tropical vegetation, so the stem litter will remain for a while. In a typical Ohia forest, uluhe accounts for 75% of the net primary production, yet only a small proportion of the forest biomass. The perched biomass network that the uluhe stem create is a rather interesting way of limiting competition from other plants species.
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Carey is right. The stems take forever to decompose and can go right through the bottom of a cheap pair of slippers and puncture a foot.
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On the other hand, the leafy part of uluhe does break down into lovely compost.
We learned to *pull* the fern out rather than cutting it, so as to avoid those lethal stobs, and then just lay it on the ground to keep weeds from taking over your newly cleared area. Walk on it or mash it down somehow and it makes an effective - and free! - natural mulch. After just the stems are left, they will be lying on the ground, rather than standing up waiting to jab your feet, and still useful for mulching paths between raised beds, marking seed rows, lightweight plant supports, etc.
aloha, Liz
"The best things in life aren't things."
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If you search through past topics you will find that I posted about trying to compost uluhe ferns and how they just don't rot. Couldn't ever figure it out but a compost pile I made out of mostly uluhe ferns sat for over a year with very little visible decomposition and never any temperature rise. Weird.
I did use a wood chipper. During that same time period I visited my parents on the mainland and made a compost pile their with misc garden and yard waste. 136 degrees F in 12 hrs.
