Thanx Forerunner!

Thank me when you have those record tomatoes and taters to show us ! :thumb:

I began using Maple shavings on my raised garden beds about a month ago, so don't have any long term results to share. However, from what I have read, no more than 3 to 4" deep, just as mulch. In addition, I applied a layer of compost manure on top of the soil, then added the Maple shavings on top. So far, everything is happy. I have used Evergreen wood chips around my perennial blooming bushes and they are incredibly happy with no adverse effects.

Yeah, I think a 2-4 inch layer of compost for mulch would cure the ills of any amount of sawdust as a top coat.

Best of all worlds, right there. :)

:bouncy:

I looked at my Alpines, which were mulched that way, then compared them to the ones that weren't today... The ones with the extra compost & mulch were twice the size! As the season progresses, the pictures will show the evidence of the results...

Went back to the sale barn with my son for two more loads of mixed bedding to really fill up our bins on Friday. What a great time together. That smell and sight just makes us grin and want more of it.

I joined this site because of this thread, thank you Forerunner!
If any of you are in Virginia Beach, the barn I work at has a massive amount of fresh manure/urine/shavings with hay thrown in on a pretty daily basis, we have 3 barns, one of which is a full care barn- those horses stay in 12 hours a day (poor guys) and the other 2 have horses that come and go throughout the day for food or riding or vets or farrier, and all the accumulated droppings end up being spread in a small field.
I cant take advantage of this as I live in a rental with a small lot (i cant even get permission to garden :grumble: ) but I thought maybe one of you could- shoot me a pm and I will give you name of barn- you will have to ask the manager about hauling it off, we are on a base, so Im not sure what the protocol will be.

Wish I was a lot closer

Me too!

This thread is going dark the last couple of days, so i'll restart it. We put our new rhurbarb in a couple weeks ago with a good mix of mixed bedding and compost. As I left for work this morning in the breaking dawn I could see the beauty of dark green leaves getting bigger and healthier. Thank God for compost/manure.

You fellers are all so enthusiastic. :)

I've been grieving ever since global warming turned out to be a hoax, as of this lingering winter/spring thing we got goin' on.......and I'm hoping that Al Gore will get back on the job and turn the temps up so's a can grow tomatoes this year. :sob:

I'll admit I didn't read through all 80 pages, so maybe someone has asked this question before. Do you know anything about/ have any experience with Black soldier flies? I have a few compost piles (much smaller, made out of old pallets) and I've been toying with the idea of getting some larvae to introduce there to help break it all down. Also, I hear if you raise them the chickens love them as treats. Florida is pretty much just sand so composting is the key to my garden growing (existing).

I've no experience with the black soldier fly larvae, but if you've read good things about the practice elsewhere, and are willing to experiment, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the results, including how it goes with feeding the chickens.

In your warm climate, I can't imagine your piles needing much help in breaking down, moisture and C/N balance being adequate, but without a little trial and error on the side, we'd be a much less educated world.......


ETA....as for reading the rest of the thread, I don't know if you missed anything vital or not, but I am compelled to warn you.....some of our best participants herein have the oddest senses of humor, respectively. :indif:

I love the idea and plan to try it. Would have already done so, but my neighbor who keeps my chickens (I don't live on my farm full time yet) is wierded out by my habit of bringing home road kills. I'm convinced that for a small backyard flock, other than some nutritional supplements, purchased chicken feed is a luxury.

You are in an area where soldier flies are normal. However, they are not found in "normal" compost systems. They rely on an abundance of green material and thus such a system would be considered too wet by most standards. Just keep adding more green material such as vegetable scraps. Like it's often said, "build it and they will come."

Martin

OK, let's say I have a resource that could supply me with a lot of food waste to compost. I'd need a ~tremendous~ supply of carbon-rich material, right? What potential sources could supply carbon-rich material? My only guess is crews that trim trees. I would probably need a chipper to help speed the breakdown of the trimmings, yes?

I'll play your little game..." I have a resource that could supply me with a lot of food waste to compost."

Hmmm...that lame joke works better verbally.

If I understand what you are asking, the tree trimmers usually chip their work simply to make it easier/more efficient for them to haul away. But if you are getting bulk branches and logs, like what was left over after my place was logged, if you can smash it down to compact it and use the food wastes to fill it in even tighter, you will get some composting going on. I used a root rake on the loader to smash my piles.

The problem is that without a good cover over the pile, you could be inviting critters to dig in the pile and you can get decomposition odors. I've got composted sludge to add a cover layer to my piles, so odors aren't much of a problem even though the sludge does smell a bit like distant pig manure. maybe if you can get some chips and hold those back as a cover, you'll have a fix.

Regardless, the stuff is going to decompose, it is just how long it takes and how bad it smells. I wish we could do a trade. I've got surplus C and will trade for your N.

Think I might agree.

Picked up my first road kill deer yesterday. Had already picked up a pet, probably a drop off. Oh did my wet horse stall cleanings send up the steam.

I put a young possum that was dead in my yard into my 4 ft. manure pile. Anything else my cats catch is going in.

I am considering buying a pto wood chipper for my tractor as I have more mesquite than I can handle at the moment. Is there any objection to using mesquite chips as mulch and compost?

Any wood chips is better than no wood chips.

That said, I don't think mesquite is quite as resistant to rot as red cedar.

Have at it and let it rot, however long it takes.

Thanx Forerunner.

Didnt think it was a big deal, but a friend said what about the sap. I said I dunno it is still wood. They sure make it nice when we harvest for Mesquite Bean Jelly thou!

I know someone in Ocala, Fl who says he wants to sell a pto chipper. says it handled 6" material, was red and looked nearly brand new when I briefly saw it in his barn. I think "wood: was in the name, maybe woodmaxx, not sure. He used it to clear his new home lot, so probably not a lot of hours on it.

If you want info, I'll connect you two. I don't know the guy except that the home builder I'm considering built his net zero house so I toured the home to see the technology and build quality.

Ive got quite a few hours on chippers so I could test it and give you an unbiased report.

Mesquite is allelopathic to certain other plants. Main effect is retarding germination. Thus it comes within the "use at your own risk" advice.

Martin

Thanx, but I just scored an almost new echo bear cast 5" for $1,500. Guy bought some property from some older people in their 80s and they left it. He said the older couple tried it one time and scared them to death. I have the invoice from 2005 when they bought it. I greased it up and gave it a whirl. Works great. Doesnt care to much for the dry stuff as far as I can tell. It still has the manuals and all the paint is in place.

Anyways Thanx though.

Never heard of such a thing......Tell me more.

I got 10+ tons of wood chips and logs delivered yesterday. A neighbor is clearing a lot so I loaned him my dump trailer in exchange for getting the wood. I wish i could get that much every week.

When I first bought this place, I had the local County Forester out to evaluate my pines for harvest and give me recommendations/critique for my farm development plans. I let slip the phrase approximating, "I want to begin the process of transforming the sand into soil."

The forester said that was impossible. I hate it when people tell me I can't do something.

So my orchard is about ready to plant. It has been amended with 100 tons of sludge, all the wood that was the jungle there previously, plus another 30 tons of wood and chips either compost piled or buried. Where I moved compost piles this week, the soil is magnificently different than the sand that was there. It is full of OM, black, holds water, improved tilth. That's only 2 acres of sand transformation with lots more to go, but I'm happy to see progress being made and that I'm slowly proving the forester wrong.

I still have a bit of leveling to do and next week I'm planting hairy vetch as a ground cover to further prep the soil prior to the trees going in.

This got me thinking about the common complaint I hear from people with sand soil, that the nutrients wash away. Where do they wash to? I assume down. How deep is this sand? What lies deep beneath the sand? Bedrock? Clay? Can you dig down to the layer where all the good stuff washed to? Would you have to dig to China? The soil must be good wherever that stuff went.

How about you bring a dump trailer load of sand to my farm, I'll load you a return load of clay? Good deal?

anywhere from 2 to 5 ft below the sand is a sandy clay. ~30' below the surface is limestone and aquifers alternating back and forth down to 500' or so. I buried all the wood to hold water and catch nutrients and am putting in the hairy vetch and comfrey to harvest the deeper nutrients and bring them to the surface. I also stirred the soil down to about 6 ft by pulling stumps so I brought clay up to the surface to mix with the sand to improve tilth. It will take me a few years to prove whether all the effort has been well spent.

Let's see, I'll bring you free clay if you pay my fuel bill. It costs me about $25/hr to haul a full 7.5 ton load. This ain't gonna be pretty.

Compost question.

I bought 4 yards of green compost. (they said 'green' means it's pure compost, not mixed with top soil)

I added about 2-3 inches of this compost in each of my raised beds.

Do I need to get the tiller out, and till it into my soil, or can I just plant my plants without 'mixing' the compost into the dirt?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Yikes, I hope I'm wrong about this, but I've never heard of green compost. There are lots of green things that go good in a compost pile, but they come out black if the compost is given half a chance to age and do its composting stuff. If the stuff isn't allowed to age very long, it turns brown.

Maybe someone else will have a different experience than mine.

"Green" could also mean that it hasn't been fully cured. If that were the case, the bacteria and other working forms may be still active and would not distinguish between what one wants to plant or what it wants to eat. I'd mix it in and not plant for a week or 10 days to be certain that the microherd will run out of fuel and become inactive.

Martin

What else did they offer for sale? I am curious, how fine was the material? Was it warm?

Microherd


Love that! :grin:

Yes, that was being "politically correct" for the one or two here who might object if I failed to mention algae, fungi, phages, viruses, etc. which may accompany the usual bacteria at various times during the decomposition process.

Martin

Clearly you are a "macrobe" bigot. What have you got against mites, centipedes, sow bugs, snails, millipedes, springtails, spiders, slugs, beetles, ants, flies, nematodes, flatworms, rotifers, and earthworms?

It is black and crumbly. I didn't notice if it was warm or not? The pile was not 'steaming'.

They also offered pre mixed compost, meaning it was part compost part topsoil.

It's awful hard telling the value and applicability of a particular batch of compost, especially stuff manufactured for sale, represented in a pitcher online, without all the books and gizmos in Martin's laboratory, but I sure do love the corner shot of that four post bed to the far left in your pitcher.

A big old bed like that, outside, right next to the compost pile (and raised beds, of course)...... now that's the kind of devotion I'm talkin' about ! :bow:

Wet it down. If it gets warm to hot it is green unfinished compost. The finished stuff will not heat up if I am correct. At least mine does not.

All of those consume organic matter and break it down to where it is more readily made into compost or humus by lower forms. The result is the same no matter if it is a sow bug or a sow, an elephant beetle or an elephant. Only the scale of production differs.

Martin