I can certainly attest to how slowly wood products decompose as I often use fine wood shavings in my compost and as mulch. It does, however, eventually break down. My homemade compost/mulch mix disappears within a few months when applied as mulch depending on the proportions.

From what I've read most vegan farmers rely on compost, green manures, human urine and humanure among other things to improve and feed the soil.

Here's one link which gives more info.

Here is a link that might be useful: vegan-organic gardening

Also soybean meal, alfalfa meal, peanut meal, cottonseed meal and canola meal as N sources (perhaps they need to be organically grown). Legume straws are also relatively high N.

Have a look at John Jeavons and Bio Intensive gardening.
The level of detail is a bit pedantic, to say the least, but there's good information about growing and using plants to improve and maintain fertility.

Urine is sterile, put it into your woody compost for the urea in it as quick and clean nitrogen. Dont have to dilute.

A life form that normally grows on decaying wood is fungi or mushroom. They are not plant, but their structure more similar with animal. Strange, huh.

Shredded tree trimmings taken during the summer when there is a lot of green leafy material mixed in really do compost fairly quickly (less than a year in our area if left piled up.) If you have a company near you that does that, you might be able to arrange for them to dump their trimmings at your property. Sometimes a little green cash in the right driver's palm can make that happen faster. Depending on the size of your operation and how much you plan to invest, you could buy a chipper/shredder and run the tree company's product through again to make the pieces smaller. That would definitely speed up the process.

Sandy

One of my neighbour had a pile transformed into wood chips last summer (2009) and left it on the side of the road. Seeing as he wasn't going to use it, I ask if I could have it, but he said his wife had plans for it. It has now become obvious that the plan was to leave it there on the asphalt of their driveway to decompose and let the wild raspberries settle in... They have taken over the mound.

He offered me the pile the other day and I declined. There's also some wild Sumacs and many weeds growing in it and those are the last things I want in my gardens.

Better not tell the vegans that there are worms in their compost. Or that bees pollinated their fruits and vegetables.

I've been a vegetarian for over twenty five years, and I know the difference between food and soil.

You should be able to do it with cover crops and green manure alfalfa for example or field peas can put up to 200 pounds n per acre
How big of a spot are you working with?

Check your state ag extension site for cover crop info

The organic farmers I know don't really use any animal inputs as blood meal costs a lot of money and manure must come from certified organic animals lots of times not practical

Yeah, never really got the bee thing. They're bugs, they make more honey than they can use, what's the problem? Think they'd be ticked if I let chickens run around the apple trees to eat bugs? :-) Thanks for the links and info.

Eric

Comfrey,comfrey,comfrey.
Someone needs to do a search on high nitrogen non animal organic plants. We have the internet Now.Peanut shells have 3.6% nitrogen,Tobacco stems have 3.7% N,Cottonseed meal has 7.0 % N.
All the above answers are good ones.
But a search will lead you to many more.

@zeroc, here is the deal on the "bee thing,"

Bees collect pollen in sacs that are attached to their legs. To harvest the pollen, commercial beekeepers use a thick "comb" in the bottom of the hive, in the slit the bees use as a entrance/exit. The bees then have to drag themselves across the "comb" to enter or exit the hive. The bristles catch and often tear off their limbs and other parts, and, consequently, pull most of the pollen they�ve collected off their legs in the process. The beekeepers then collect the pollen and and get rid of most of the "debris" (aka. bee body parts).

Pollen is like bee bread (any of you who have tasted it can testify!)�they need it to survive as a healthy colony. Taking the pollen from them (in the usual way) makes them have to forage more often, which is wearing on their bodies and health.
Here�s a quote from Wikipedia about bees:

"As a rule of thumb the foraging area around a beehive extends for two miles (3 km), although bees have been observed foraging twice and three times this distance from the hive. Foraging at extreme distances wears out the wings of individual bees, reduces the life expectancy of foraging bees and therefore the efficiency of the colony."

Royal jelly is also harvested at the expense of the health of the colony. Commercial, industrial beekeeping and pollen/royal jelly-harvesting practices are cruel on the small scale and dangerous on a large scale. They�re degrading the health and balance of honey bees. Bees are so important to the health and survival of our natural world."

There is no doubt successful beekeeping is extremely exploitative. Not to mention that honeybees, often subsidized by cheap sugar, compete with native pollinators.

How about finding a juice bar or vegetarian restaurant and getting their food waste as a nitrogen source?

Beekeepers collect pollen? Really, I thought they just collected the honey?

I've met a few beekeepers and I think they would dispute your notion of how they raise bees.

I don't know that much about beekeeping, but I do know you can buy a jar of bee pollen at the health food store, so it has to come from somewhere.

re: pnbrown's comment about competing with native pollinators: I thought we had lost 90% of our bees in the US and pollination was in serious jeopardy. This is the first I have heard about that problem. I thought honeybees *were* the native pollinators...

Apis millifera is an import. Can you imagine life for the bumbles and other natives within range of cultivated honeybees? They have an immense advantage due to being fed, housed, and moved around by humans.

Well, I learn something new every day around here!

I am a beekeeper, a vegetarian, and an animal lover, and I think that's baloney.

Beekeeper here. The "white man's fly" (Native American term for imported Italian apis mellifera) is a valuable pollinator but is hardly the only one active in non-commercial conditions. The humble bumble actually pollinates more flora more prodigiously due to anatomic advantage. Attempts are being made to manage them as hired pollinators but not being a social insect there isn't much success to date.

Honey bees will produce royal jelly, propolis, pollen and of course honey in excess depending on management. All bees apart from the queen & drones work themselves to death, whether managed or not (feral). Management doesn't mean exploitation without agreeing on some clarifying definition. Bee KEEPERS have a vested interest in the health of their hives.

If competition means burgeoning population vying for fixed resources, I agree with the premise. But I can show you 15 different pollinators in a square foot of buckwheat in bloom that belie that. Cooperation and harmony come to mind rather.

If one is supporting honeybees with sugar, or some other food made possible and cheap for the beekeeper by fossil-fueled agriculture, then of course the honeybees can pretty easily overpopulate an area and make life difficult for natives who are not being subsidized in that way.

Here is a study, not done in NA, but possibly relevant nonetheless.

Here is a link that might be useful: invasives are not just plants

I think the hyperbole and mis-information about beekeeping exhibited here is really disturbing.

I am an organic beekeeper. I do not exploit my bees. Their existence in my flower-filled urban yard does no harm to the many native pollinators that I see every single day.

Where do these crazy anti-beekeeping ideas even come from???

IOW, what I am suggesting is really disturbing to you?

I propose that you have no way of knowing what the impact of your hive/s is on the native pollinators within the range of your honeybees. You see them but you don't have much idea of what is going on at their level.

No more disturbing than any other example of exploitation and short range thinking.

It is a rueful irony that the authors of the cited study don't consider the monoculture to be pollinated as detrimental to the native plantlife. Of course if you want cherries, you pick them only.

P.N., regarding your statement, "There is no doubt successful beekeeping is extremely exploitative" I have taken some umbrage since I consider myself successful but not "exploitative".

But I readily concede that much of the produce grown in my garden and arbor has been "exploited" for specific traits. Touche.

Al, yes there is no doubt that everything we do is exploitative. I think that is your point. More accurately, in the case of domesticated plants and animals, it is a mutually-benificial exploitation. Do we exploit maize, or is maize using us to dominate vast regions of the globe? Countless numbers of other plants species have been removed in that process.

Similarly with apis mellifera, in its association with humans it has been able to gain a big advantage over its competitors, and in regions where mellifera abounds logic would indicate that the competitors exist in smaller numbers than they would, just as a cornfield in Indiana surely has a lot fewer trees and bushes than it would if it were a mixed use permaculture.

I encourage deeper thinking here by this thread swerve, rather than an attack to elicit knee-jerk response.

All I can say this morning is that I exploited a fresh peach with my cereal for breakfast. Man that was tasty!

Carry on. :-]