Well as I stated earlier in practic in a peach orchard, not that much organic matter was created in 7 years. Your plants tend to use it up, so not much if any buildup. I have a hardwood wood pile, and the bark from this hardwood breaks down right on the pile and looks like pure black humus, now that was impressive! I now take the bark off my firewood, let it age, and use it as mulch.
This was stated by Olpea
I remember reading somewhere, something like 25% of the mulch by weight, actually becomes soil. The rest releases carbon back into the air. And since its by weight (and mulch is "fluffier" than soil anyway) it takes a long time to build a lot of soil with mulch. As I recall, an acre foot of topsoil weighs 3 mil. pounds. So to build, say, 6" of topsoil on an acre, it would take 6 million pounds of wood chips (1.5 mil X 4). More mulch than I'd ever want to shovel in my lifetime.
|