Chop and Drop
Keep a bucket and your secateurs handy at all times!
If you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I’m always talking about ‘Chop and Drop’, and there’s a really good reason for that. It’s a brilliant strategy and really helps in a dry, limited-rainfall garden or plot.
I was introduced to the concept when I stumbled across Syntropic Agriculture, and found lots of videos extolling its virtues on YouTube (here’s one from guru Geoff Lawton, specifically about Chop and Drop).
In this blog, I want to share exactly what it looks like in my baby food forest in Eastern Spain, a little in from the coast on the stretch between Valencia and Alicante.
The biggest challenge here is a lack of rainfall and blisteringly hot days in the summertime. As our place is situated on the side of a tall hill, our soil is filled with rocks, and in areas, heavy clay. That means that the rocks heat up in the sunshine, and the clay areas bake hard. It’s not a very hospitable environment for plants!
That’s where the chop and drop comes in. Chop down branches, leaves, and twigs on plants that have biomass to spare, and add all that plant material to the soil’s surface. That’s it. My part is done.
What happens next, is that the microorganisms that live in the soil and around, come to work their magic. Insects might eat and excrete the leaves. Mycorrhizae take advantage of the cool, damp area underneath the chop and drop layer to spread and interact with the plant roots, helping to deliver necessary nutrients and help protect the plants against drought, salt build-up, and other soil problems, such as disease.
The dead plant material starts to rot or crumble, and this becomes integrated into the structure of the soil over differing timescales… here the leaves are often dried to a crisp within days of dropping, but twigs and branches can take months or years to fully break down. This improved soil structure helps in many ways; any water that does arrive is absorbed deeply, like a sponge; particularly clay soils without this improvement will not hold the water, which will run off and not be available where it’s needed.
The only limit I have on the depth of ‘chop and drop’ material is how much I’m able to harvest from other plants! I usually cut a bucket’s worth at a time, and spread it anywhere that the soil is bare, or if I’ve just watered an area, or if I’ve planted seeds (which will quite happily push their way up through the loose mulch, and enjoy its protection).
Huw Richards has this informative video about Chop and Drop, which talks about the benefits. The only part I disagree with is that I also use the woody stems, chopped up. They don’t cause any problems on the soil and can be pushed aside if you want to plant something.
Just like you wouldn’t clean your teeth only once a year, chop and drop is often part of my daily activity in the garden. If I water a new plant, I’ll also drop prunings around it immediately, to start the decomposition and feeding process, and stop the water I applied evaporating, which is essential in the heat of spring, summer, and autumn! This is different from the traditional spring or autumn mulching that you might be used to.
If you decide this strategy is something you’d like to adopt, I would also suggest you consider it when you’re planting new plants. My chop and drop materials are available all year, and some plants are mainly here so that I have material in the height of summer when other plants are struggling. Plants I find valuable sources of chop and drop material are…
winter flowering jasmine
vines
lemongrass
papyrus
cardoon
jasmine
honeysuckle
carob
although anything that has leaves/stems/branches can be used, so when you’re planting, consider whether the plant has a useful chop and drop function too!
Happy chopping and dropping!