Pat wrote:

Last year when I ran out of other organic material to add to my soil, I
stumbled onto a great fertilizer for corn (and probably other plants as
well).

I had gone to a friend's farm where they had a barnyard full of composted
combined droppings of goats, pigs, horses, cows and various poultry, and I
took home a load of it, thinking it would be a wonderful addition to the
soil where my sweet corn would be planted, but I ran out of the stuff when
there were still two rows left to plant. It was getting dark, the seed had
been soaking for too long to wait until the next day, and I didn't have time
to run to the store for a bag of compost and still get the seed in the
ground before dark.

So, not wanting to plant the corn without some kind of fertilizer, I had to
come up with a solution on the spot. I ran into the house and grabbed two
cat litter boxes that were filled with "Feline Pine" which is basically pine
sawdust made into pellets that dissolve when made wet. The cats generally do
not poop in the Feline Pine boxes, preferring instead to use the clay or
corn litter for that function, however if they do use the Feline Pine for
poo, it's a simple matter to remove the lumps and empty the damp sawdust
into 5-gallon buckets.

This "cat dust" is what I mixed into the soil in the last two rows, thinking
it would likely prevent the corn from even sprouting but feeling reckless
and a bit desperate, I took the chance.

A few weeks later the difference in the two areas of corn was astounding!!
The cat-dust rows were much taller, much deeper green, and much
healthier-looking than the rest of the corn! This continued being the case
all the way to harvest time. The cat-dusted corn produced more abundant,
much larger, much more juicy-sweet ears than the rest of the plants, which
looked stunted by comparison.

Thus I started saving Feline Pine "used" dust in a plastic bin last summer
and it's now in the corn patch that was planted in the last two weeks. But
this time I added more stuff to the mix; in a wheelbarrow I blended cat dust
with composted cow manure, old composted sawdust from a lumber mill, some
human urine, sand, ag-lime and kelp meal to make what I think will prove to
be an outstanding fertilizer. The corn is now coming up, and I'm anxiously
waiting to see how it does... I put beans and squash between the corn too.


I dump the used Feline Pine (generic variety from
PetSmart usually) onto my compost pile.

I usually end up having volunteer onions and
stuff growing out of my compose, so I had a clue
that at least the used FP wasn't *hurting* anything,
but it's even better to know that once I start
dumping the compost into the garden beds it'll
actually jump start stuff I'm planting there.

Way to go!

Nyssa, who has to haul her own trash to the
dump, so compostable kitty litter beats gotta-
haul-it-to-the-dump expensive litter