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#1
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mulch colour
hello,
in retrospect, i am thinking now that it ended up being unfortunate that we mulched with horse poo, rather than (say) straw, just before a stint of (unseasonal for the area) hot weather with almost no rain. knowing that dark colours are likely to absorb heat & lighter colours to deflect it, i've been putting straw round the veggies over the top of the poo (but as my plants are pretty well spaced, most of the bed areas are still pooed, rather than strawed). when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's just blindingly hot :-). between the rows the grass is short & dry & therefore light-coloured, but the throb of heat you experience walking in on a hot day is quite remarkable nevertheless! i can't recall any previous time in my fairly limited gardening experience where i've noticed that i seemed (personally) to have created an inadvertant heat sink like this. the garden in general, the veggie patch in particular, is struggling with lack of water atm & it's just making me sad, really. i haven't been getting good germination this spring/summer, nor good growth. there are things i'm just not doing because i foresee that they would fail, & i should just put it off until a cooler/wetter period starts up. any thoughts or comments on mulch colour? ta! kylie |
#2
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mulch colour
0tterbot wrote:
hello, in retrospect, i am thinking now that it ended up being unfortunate that we mulched with horse poo, rather than (say) straw, just before a stint of (unseasonal for the area) hot weather with almost no rain. knowing that dark colours are likely to absorb heat & lighter colours to deflect it, i've been putting straw round the veggies over the top of the poo (but as my plants are pretty well spaced, most of the bed areas are still pooed, rather than strawed). when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's just blindingly hot :-). between the rows the grass is short & dry & therefore light-coloured, but the throb of heat you experience walking in on a hot day is quite remarkable nevertheless! There is also the cooling effect of water evaporation. Darker green lush growth feels cooler than lighter dry growth because it is keeping cool by evaporation. i can't recall any previous time in my fairly limited gardening experience where i've noticed that i seemed (personally) to have created an inadvertant heat sink like this. the garden in general, the veggie patch in particular, is struggling with lack of water atm & it's just making me sad, really. i haven't been getting good germination this spring/summer, nor good growth. there are things i'm just not doing because i foresee that they would fail, & i should just put it off until a cooler/wetter period starts up. any thoughts or comments on mulch colour? ta! kylie In principle a lighter colour will reflect more heat but I doubt the difference would be great. It will still be fulfilling its main purpose of insulating and covering the soil. In any I case it would be better than none. You could always apply a thin whitewash of lime ;-) David |
#3
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mulch colour
0tterbot wrote:
hello, in retrospect, i am thinking now that it ended up being unfortunate that we mulched with horse poo, rather than (say) straw, just before a stint of (unseasonal for the area) hot weather with almost no rain. knowing that dark colours are likely to absorb heat & lighter colours to deflect it, i've been putting straw round the veggies over the top of the poo (but as my plants are pretty well spaced, most of the bed areas are still pooed, rather than strawed). when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's just blindingly hot :-). between the rows the grass is short & dry & therefore light-coloured, but the throb of heat you experience walking in on a hot day is quite remarkable nevertheless! i can't recall any previous time in my fairly limited gardening experience where i've noticed that i seemed (personally) to have created an inadvertant heat sink like this. the garden in general, the veggie patch in particular, is struggling with lack of water atm & it's just making me sad, really. i haven't been getting good germination this spring/summer, nor good growth. there are things i'm just not doing because i foresee that they would fail, & i should just put it off until a cooler/wetter period starts up. any thoughts or comments on mulch colour? ta! kylie Funny you mention that. I used to mulch with stable manure (mixed liberally with wood-shavings) and it remains my favourite mulch to this day. Sadly, we no longer keep horses, so I've had to revert to paddock-pickings (ie pure poo) to bring home and rot. This feels *much* hotter to me than the shavings mixture. I'd never discussed it with anyone before, but I think we've hit upon something here. Would it be worth investing in a bale of sugar cane mulch to cover the poo thinly and (perhaps?) reduce the temp? -- Trish Brown {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia |
#4
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mulch colour
"Trish Brown" wrote in message
0tterbot wrote: hello, in retrospect, i am thinking now that it ended up being unfortunate that we mulched with horse poo, rather than (say) straw, just before a stint of (unseasonal for the area) hot weather with almost no rain. knowing that dark colours are likely to absorb heat & lighter colours to deflect it, i've been putting straw round the veggies over the top of the poo (but as my plants are pretty well spaced, most of the bed areas are still pooed, rather than strawed). when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's just blindingly hot :-). (snip) I used to mulch with stable manure (mixed liberally with wood-shavings) and it remains my favourite mulch to this day. Sadly, we no longer keep horses, so I've had to revert to paddock-pickings (ie pure poo) to bring home and rot. This feels *much* hotter to me than the shavings mixture. I'd never discussed it with anyone before, but I think we've hit upon something here. Would it be worth investing in a bale of sugar cane mulch to cover the poo thinly and (perhaps?) reduce the temp? Otterbot has a problem with bloody choughs so I'd recommend rice hulls rather than sugar cane mulch. Rice hulls are so tiny they seem to have prolbems chucking it around. One thing I never knew about choughs till I was told and then actually watched them, is that choughs only use their beaks for chucking stuff and never use their feet to rake stuff. |
#5
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mulch colour
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
... when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's just blindingly hot :-). between the rows the grass is short & dry & therefore light-coloured, but the throb of heat you experience walking in on a hot day is quite remarkable nevertheless! There is also the cooling effect of water evaporation. Darker green lush growth feels cooler than lighter dry growth because it is keeping cool by evaporation. well, that's what i was calling "transpiration". :-) i can't recall any previous time in my fairly limited gardening experience where i've noticed that i seemed (personally) to have created an inadvertant heat sink like this. the garden in general, the veggie patch in particular, is struggling with lack of water atm & it's just making me sad, really. i haven't been getting good germination this spring/summer, nor good growth. there are things i'm just not doing because i foresee that they would fail, & i should just put it off until a cooler/wetter period starts up. any thoughts or comments on mulch colour? ta! kylie In principle a lighter colour will reflect more heat but I doubt the difference would be great. It will still be fulfilling its main purpose of insulating and covering the soil. In any I case it would be better than none. certainly! i'm not sure a few degrees' difference is even waht you would call a "great" difference - and as i said i've not actually measured it, just going by feel. You could always apply a thin whitewash of lime ;-) i could just concrete the whole lot over, even g! kylie |
#6
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mulch colour
"Trish Brown" wrote in message
... Funny you mention that. I used to mulch with stable manure (mixed liberally with wood-shavings) and it remains my favourite mulch to this day. Sadly, we no longer keep horses, so I've had to revert to paddock-pickings (ie pure poo) to bring home and rot. This feels *much* hotter to me than the shavings mixture. feels hotter in the air, do you mean? it makes sense to me that different mulches have different effects in every way (including perhaps on air temp). well, i'm not sure, but have noted that you've had a similar experience. (now we both feel more normal ;-) I'd never discussed it with anyone before, but I think we've hit upon something here. Would it be worth investing in a bale of sugar cane mulch to cover the poo thinly and (perhaps?) reduce the temp? oh, my garden's huge - i can't really afford sugar cane mulch on it :-( (also, i loathe the way it comes packaged in plastic!!!!!! i hate plastic!!!!!!! arghhh!) what i was doing instead was using ordinary straw after it's been through the chook house. it's a fairly light colour & while the sugar cane is rather choppy & nice, i'm mostly pretty happy with ordinary straw, considering it's so cheap & plus the chooks use it anyway. except the current batch, which evidently got rained on at the shop. (sigh). which makes it fine for the garden but if i can't dry it out & it goes mouldy i'll have to get another lot for the chook house. ta! kylie |
#7
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mulch colour
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message
. au... ) I used to mulch with stable manure (mixed liberally with wood-shavings) and it remains my favourite mulch to this day. Sadly, we no longer keep horses, so I've had to revert to paddock-pickings (ie pure poo) to bring home and rot. This feels *much* hotter to me than the shavings mixture. I'd never discussed it with anyone before, but I think we've hit upon something here. Would it be worth investing in a bale of sugar cane mulch to cover the poo thinly and (perhaps?) reduce the temp? Otterbot has a problem with bloody choughs so I'd recommend rice hulls rather than sugar cane mulch. Rice hulls are so tiny they seem to have prolbems chucking it around. i've still not got round to trying a bit of that!! (am i not slack?) i can think of 1001 uses to try it, naturally. i will get some! One thing I never knew about choughs till I was told and then actually watched them, is that choughs only use their beaks for chucking stuff and never use their feet to rake stuff. well they certainly do an admirable job with beaks alone. lately i have seen some of those evil, red-eyed *******s lurking in the orchard. grrrr! christ, they're a loathesome bird. ta! kylie |
#8
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mulch colour
0tterbot wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message ... when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's just blindingly hot :-). between the rows the grass is short & dry & therefore light-coloured, but the throb of heat you experience walking in on a hot day is quite remarkable nevertheless! There is also the cooling effect of water evaporation. Darker green lush growth feels cooler than lighter dry growth because it is keeping cool by evaporation. well, that's what i was calling "transpiration". :-) Call it evapotranspiration then. Which is what we have right now, due to a hot north westerly. Praying for rain for Xmas. David |
#9
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mulch colour
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:46:32 GMT, "0tterbot" wrote:
hello, in retrospect, i am thinking now that it ended up being unfortunate that we mulched with horse poo, rather than (say) straw, just before a stint of (unseasonal for the area) hot weather with almost no rain. knowing that dark colours are likely to absorb heat & lighter colours to deflect it, i've been putting straw round the veggies over the top of the poo (but as my plants are pretty well spaced, most of the bed areas are still pooed, rather than strawed). when i walk into the veggie garden, anecdotally at least (i haven't measured due to a lack of a working themometer at the moment!!) it is several degrees hotter there than in general garden areas (where the larger plants would ease the effect with shading, transpiration & all that stuff - but there are no larger plants in teh veggie garden - it's just blindingly hot :-). between the rows the grass is short & dry & therefore light-coloured, but the throb of heat you experience walking in on a hot day is quite remarkable nevertheless! i can't recall any previous time in my fairly limited gardening experience where i've noticed that i seemed (personally) to have created an inadvertant heat sink like this. the garden in general, the veggie patch in particular, is struggling with lack of water atm & it's just making me sad, really. i haven't been getting good germination this spring/summer, nor good growth. there are things i'm just not doing because i foresee that they would fail, & i should just put it off until a cooler/wetter period starts up. any thoughts or comments on mulch colour? You shouldn't use fresh manure on the garden. Let it compost for 5 or 6 months first. |
#10
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mulch colour
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#11
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mulch colour
On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 18:24:21 +1100, "David Hare-Scott" wrote:
wrote: You shouldn't use fresh manure on the garden. Let it compost for 5 or 6 months first. Why? Because during composting, some nutrients will be removed from the soil. |
#13
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mulch colour
David Hare-Scott wrote:
snip I wouldn't apply fresh chicken manure (it is better added to the compost heap) because of the high nitrogen content as it can easily burn young and tender plants but I apply horse anytime. This is fairly common practice in some places and no ill effects have been reported. David Yeah, I've used it straight from the - ah - supplier with no probs. The only thing I have observed is that it's better not to pack it too close to rose stems. Mine got a bit soggy around the edges, but clearing the HP away fixed the problem. -- Trish Brown {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia |
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