Field Guide · Food forest · 6 min read

Chop and Drop: Growing Your Own Mulch

Cut the leaves and leave them where they fall. It looks like doing nothing and it feeds the soil.

Written on the farm by Nathan Story · Story Thyme Farms, Missouri · Updated

Story Thyme Farms · Bench cardMay–September

Chop and drop mulching

Growing your own mulch inside the food forest

DifficultyMinutes per tree
Star plantsComfrey, clover, yarrow
Cuts per season2–4
CostZero, forever
1What to plantPlant an understory that feeds itself
2When to cutCut when the growth is lush, just before it flowers
3Where to put itLay it under the outer branches, not against the trunk
4What happens nextThe soil takes it from there
Materials needed · Serrated harvest knife · String trimmer · Comfrey root cuttings · Crimson clover seed
Written on the farm · Missouristorythymefarms.com/guides/chop-and-drop-mulching

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The long version

Watercolor plate of cut comfrey laid as mulch around a sapling
Growing your own mulch inside the food forest · field plate

Every bag of fertilizer is nutrients that were grown somewhere else and trucked in. Chop and drop skips all of that. You grow mineral-rich plants in among the fruit trees, cut them down a few times each summer, and leave the leaves lying where they fall. Worms and soil life do the rest.

  1. Step 1 · What to plant

    Plant an understory that feeds itself

    Watercolour plate of an understory planting of comfrey, clover, vetch and yarrow growing beneath a fruit tree

    The most useful plants are comfrey, for potassium and sheer volume of leaf, clovers and vetch, which fix nitrogen at ground level, and yarrow and nettle for trace minerals. In larger plantings you can also cut back woody nitrogen fixers like false indigo or Siberian pea shrub and use the stems as mulch. Two or three comfrey plants per fruit tree is the core of it.

  2. Step 2 · When to cut

    Cut when the growth is lush, just before it flowers

    Watercolour plate of comfrey and yarrow at peak leaf just before bloom being sheared a couple of inches above the crown with a sickle

    Plants hold the most nutrients when they are in full leaf, just before or as they begin to flower. Cut comfrey a couple of inches above the crown, cut the clover with a string trimmer, and cut nettles wearing gloves. Everything regrows for another cut in four to six weeks, which gives us two to four cuts a season here.

  3. Step 3 · Where to put it

    Lay it under the outer branches, not against the trunk

    Watercolour plate of cut green leaves piled a few inches thick in a ring at the drip line of a tree, bare ground kept clear at the trunk

    Pile the cut leaves in a ring under the outer edge of the canopy, where the feeding roots actually are, a few inches thick, on top of the existing wood chips. Let the pile wilt for a day first so comfrey stems cannot root where they land. Then leave it alone. That is the whole job.

  4. Step 4 · What happens next

    The soil takes it from there

    Watercolour plate of a green mulch layer half broken down into dark worm castings and white fungal threads, earthworms working in it

    Within a few weeks the green layer disappears into worm castings and fungal threads, and each round builds the soil a little deeper. Trees fed this way handle dry spells that stress trees growing in mown grass. The fertilizer program becomes a few minutes with a knife.

Materials needed
Serrated harvest knifeString trimmerComfrey root cuttingsCrimson clover seed

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Questions we actually get

Doesn't dropping fresh greens tie up nitrogen like fresh wood chips do?
No, that worry belongs to high-carbon mulches. Soft green material is nitrogen-rich, it composts in place like a sheet of green manure. The chips below handle carbon, the chopped greens are the protein course.
Can I chop and drop diseased plant material?
Rust-spotted comfrey and mildewed clover, fine, those diseases do not threaten trees. Fire-blighted prunings and brown-rotted fruit drops, never, those leave the system entirely. Know which kingdom the problem belongs to.
Is this actually enough to replace fertilizer?
For established fruit trees on decent soil, with comfrey rings and a nitrogen-fixing ground layer, yes, ours get nothing else. Young trees on poor ground appreciate a compost topdress each spring while the guild grows into its job.
More on comfrey
From the plant library

Comfrey — the full profile

Zones, cold-hardy cultivars, spacing, feeding, and where to buy one already rooted.

Open the comfrey guide →