"0tterbot" wrote in message news:hO8Cm.48153
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message

So what are you doing to increase your humus level Otter?

well, i've been mulching like a ******* & i'm getting there (slowly!) :-)

i REALLY like horse poo.

Nectar of the Gods. But only another gardener would understand that.

i think it's a good mulch as well as the fact it
breaks down & goes in pretty rapidly (which is tiresome to reapply, of
course, but that is the point!) i've been waiting on another trailer load
from the stables but it hasn't appeared yet (monsieur has been busy). and
as an aside, i like to mix it in with potting mix for pots, too, i reckon
it makes the potting mix so much more moist & well-structured.

i use the poo-and-straw mix from the chooks as much as possible - limited
to some degree by my laziness & quantity of poo available from only 10
birds. ideally, i compost it in a nice moist pile, regularly turned, for a
while first, but i also just dump it on empty beds to age & break down by
itself, & i will also dump it between plants, trying to avoid the root
zone as it's pretty fresh. i know one is not supposed to do that, but i
do, and i've not had anything die from doing that (that i could identify).

:-)) I think that the old adage of chook poop being too hot is something
that only unexperienced gardeners and/or those without chooks believe.

Unless one has a garden the size of postage stamp, there is always somewhere
that fresh chook poop can be spread. My attitude to all manure is to spread
it and then at least the nutrients can go into the ground and/or the soil
biota can start to do its business on it/with it.

we also use leaves (collected from town in autumn as a rule - we haven't
many deciduous trees & quite frankly they can use their own leaves - _i'm_
not going to collect them to put elsewhere!) i've been known to organise
grass clippings & so forth, but as i said, one of my big battles is
against my own laziness :-) i no longer have neighbours who mow the grass
& collect all the clippings in a pile & give it to us, so that's an option
lost to me now. (bizarre garden behaviour on their part, but it was very
handy for me!)

Well most of us have to fight that idleness bug at some time or other. I
tend to be rather cyclical in my habits. I'll work like a demon for weeks
and then take days off when I know I should be full steam ahead.

when something needs mulching but there's no poo to be had, i just use
straw. again, it breaks down quickly. i wish i could justify the expense
of hay or pea straw, because i'm sure it would really help, but i can't
really g, so ordinary straw just has to do at this point. because i tend
to mulch fairly thinly & all year around, i just spread the available
substance amongst whatever needs mulching.

Last year Himself bought about 10 bales of hay and edged a sloping spud
patch with it on the two lower sides. He then bought a load of loam mixed
with turkey poop and filled it so it was level. We had a superb crop of
spuds but TMWOT, the best thing was the hay. this year it's the most superb
muclhing material and I'm gradually dragging it out a bale at a time as I
need muclh and replacing it with a new bale.

did you know that hay spread straight from a bale can be a bit toxic? One
superb little local gardening book I have says to buy hay and then leave it
to go off by just letting it lie around on the soil and then every few
months to turn it - makes sense to me after seeing the quality of Himself's
spud bales.

have a few BIG beds for veggies down the back where i've been using
newspaper held down with either straw mix, or just with boards, to keep
the weeds out basically & supply a bit of nutrition while waiting. (i
try to remember with this to spread some blood & bone first). done
properly, this is a really good method to keep a space organised while
it's empty for a long time. done not-quite-properly, you can get newspaper
blowing _everywhere_ when it's windy!! that doesn't bother me but it's
best not to have to do soemthing all over again, i reckon. (i have some
failed newspaper areas i have to do again, which is bothering me atm ;-)
this is also good for a bed which has spaced-apart items in it - the
spaces are covered by newspaper, & the whole lot mulched over with straw
mix or whatever else is available. it's not so good for planting things
through, it's best done afterwards i reckon.

Yup. I have done that in a number of places so I know what you mean.

i would really like a constant supply of large-herbivore poo on the
premises, but i'm not getting any large herbivores any time soon. maybe
one day. :-)

I have a load of horse poo waiting for me to collect from the neighbours
ATM. I did my Lady Bountiful routine with a neighbour a couple of weeks ago
filling up polystyrene containers with any plant she fancied so she went
home and started putting together a pile of poo for me. They'd been
spreading it on the paddocks and I hadn't had any from her for ages :-(( Not
that I really needed any over winter. I'd spread so much of it on beds in
autumn that it was just quietly sitting there doing it's thing.

compost has been something of a disappointment to me so far - we just
can't seem to get both quality & quantity. we use compostibles from a
cafe, so there's quite a bit, but it takes a long time to get anything at
all. mainly we have tended so far to use it when still lumpy, more as a
mulch than mixed in. so i feel i can't really comment about compost in
this context. i feel fairly sure that we haven't enough nitrogenous
materials in it, as we give spare greens to the chooks, mostly.

Could you buy a bale of wood shaving, spread it in the chook yard and then
toss the whole lot of the restaurant gleanings to the chooks and let them do
the work? That way you've got carbon (wood shavings), nitrogen (chook poop)
and cheap chook food. Or perhaps a bathtub sized worm farm or two?

it's up to dh to do as i gave that job
to him, & he's struggling with it a bit (lack of time, knowledge &
inclination). might have to start adding in chook poo or soemthing to get
it going better, & it would be good to be adding in grass clippings or
something. and sadly, my comfrey seems to have died (!)

so has mine - or at least it hasn't yet shown it's head so I'm still
considering ti gone at this stage.

that pretty much sums up my mulching behaviour (and wasn't it long?!!).
does anyone have any other thoughts?

As usual, an interesting read.